My laser blew up!

:) Thought that might get your attention :).

I had my first board kickback today, that was oh so much fun. I was trying to trim down a 2.5" piece of wood which is nearly impossible anyway but then you add that I was steadying it with a 2x4 to hold it still and it seems there may also have been a big ole knot in it. But all combined, my miter saw just wasn't a fan. I heard a giant pop like a muffled gun shot and thank God it went backwards and all around and away from me. The piece of wood literally blew up and was in like 8 different pieces and spread in about a 180 degree arc around me. On the ground underneath my saw was this:


That would be what is left of the plastic piece that was holding up my laser line. I didn't get a shot of the actual laser line but the light is hanging by the 1/2" cord.

Thankfully I did not get hurt and my saw still works fine, just the poor laser light needs a bit of doctoring, thankfully it's under warranty.

As for the rest of my day, well God was good to me a few times today because it was a beautiful and sunny day and not a hint of rain. It was warm enough to work outside with a t-shirt but not so hot that I was roasting - perfect.

I unfortunately found a glitch in Google Reader today - the plans on the site I'm using discussed the measurements for the side rails because they were originally designed to be too short since a standard mattress for a twin is 75" long, so she fixed the design. Unfortunately Google Reader didn't print the newest version of the blog when I printed the plan and I didn't notice it when I did the cuts for bed #1. Thankfully I caught it before cutting for bed #2.

So now I have two 72" long 2x8s that are pink/purple and two 73.5" long 2x2s sitting in my hallway that I will have to find another use for - maybe a bench or bookcase or something.

So of course I had to make a trip to Home depot to get more wood, and I asked hubby to go for me midday anyway because I ran out of 1x4s, no idea why, but oh well.

so Hubby went to HD once midday for me, then again with me later in the evening for the 2x8s, but they didn't have the 2x2s I needed so then I went sans hubby but with the munchkin 20 mins away to another HD that had them. I hate 2x2s, seriously. They are soooo hard to find straight and square. Me and the HD guy went through 6 bundles of these things to find 2 decent pieces and 1 that was half good - which only worked cause I only needed 35.5" off that one lol.

After all the beautiful sunshine, busted laser, blown up wood, incorrect cuts, and missing wood I was finally done for the day :) and all of the cuts for bed #2 are DONE!! I also did the cuts for the guardrail as well. Since we aren't letting her sleep on the top bunk for quite some time and we're leaving them as 2 twins for a while, I didn't bother cutting the ladder yet.

Joey's patio is all cleaned up and tools are all put away and all the wood is jam packed in my apartment so I can assemble the footboards tomorrow.

Gotta "love" apartment living - here is the giant stack of wood hiding behind my recliner. There is also a random 2x8 in my front closet and all of the painted pieces are hanging out in the hallway lol





That's it for tonight, hopefully tomorrow is less eventful :). The hardware should be in for bed #1 though :). I just have to sand and paint the newly cut boards and clear coat everything, then it will be ready for assembly :). Hopefully while it all dries I can assemble bed 2 :). Then if all goes well, by the end of the weekend Alyssa will have the 1st of the 2 beds to sleep on and the 2nd one will hopefully we done or almost done.

Vacation Day 1: Bed 1 is all painted!

Well today started off lovely - raining, snowing and freezing cold. Not exactly ideal building weather. I got up reading to get going but was sadly disappointed. But once hubby got some gardening done, I was able to set up and get some painting done in the kitchen.

I got the 2nd headboard painted and after that I froze my butt off on the back porch sanding the rails, supports, and slats.

I hate 2x2s. They are evil. They have way too many imperfections and they snag you and it's almost impossible to sand without ripping off sections because of the screwed up edges. And those were the GOOD ones that I had to hunt through like 50 different boards to find a few straight ones.

But everything got sanded and hubby helped me out so we tag teamed it a bit and I sanded while he took over the painting station ion the kitchen and got everything painted. Then once all of it was done and dry, I came in and did the touch ups.

So it's all done and ready for hardware, which should be here by Friday according to the UPS site :).

We could have put the center together (the part that supports the bed slats) and just waited on final assembly of attaching headboards to rails, but I see no point in having that huge thing sitting in my dining room for 2 days. :)

Here are the completed pieces hanging out in my hallway :)


Tomorrow I plan to go back to Joey's house and get the rest of the cutting done and assemble of at least 1 foot board (top bunk has 2 foot boards being used as a head and foot board). Please don't rain, please don't rain, please don't rain!!!!!!!!!!

I just asked Alyssa if she loves the pink/purple color and if it's pretty. She said yes but it's not beautiful because it needs a flower. Of course, how could we possibly have forgotten a flower (insert sarcase here). Hubby seems to think he'll be painting a flower on the headboard now, but it's not happening. We'll use the dollar store cling on flowers that are on her bedroom walls then her highness' bed will match her bedroom. There will be no messing up the atrocious pink/purple now that it's done lol. And she will think it's beautiful!!!

Headboard Painted!

I was able to sneak in some time to paint one of the headboards today. I got one side dry and painted the other, but of course it's starting to rain so once it was like halfway dry, we brought it in to dry in the living room.

Here's Alyssa supervising me on the back porch and pretending she is shy. That's her chair i was sitting in to paint lol, it was easier cause it was lower to the ground :)


That was side one, this is the completed one. I just have to spot check and do any needed touch-ups and then add a coat of polyurethane.


It looks kinda like a mix of light pink and violet. Much better then pepto bismol :).

I have Wednesday through Friday off for vacation this week so I can get more work done on this, although it's supposed to rain on Wednesday. but if i can get the munchkin to stay out of the living room I can probably sand the rails and assemble the supports and maybe even paint them and the 2nd headboard. Then one bed will be done so when the sun comes out on Thursday I can hopefully get started on bed #2. I don't have the bed hardware yet for either so even if I finish on schedule on Wednesday with bed 1, I still won't have the hardware, but that should be relatively easy to install.

:)

Pink Tiara it is!

The color of her royal highness' bunk beds that is :). We went to Walmart to get some Kilz paint - they have the stuff that is paint and primer in one - so we picked a few color samples and showed Alyssa. She liked them all, every time we picked a new one she said she loved it and it was her favorite. So finally I grabbed 4 choices - a couple pinks, a purple, and a light green and told her she could only pick one favorite and she grabbed "Pink Tiara" which kinda looks like a lighter version of pepto bismol lol. the best part was the price, only $22 something. The Behr Premium Plus Ultra with the primer and paint was almost $35.

I thought of doing the beds white but she loves pink and I figured white would get too dirty. If we hate it we can always change it later.

Once we got home, I ordered the hardware for the bed. Instead of screwing the rails to the posts, we're going with brackets that will allow us to disassemble the bed as needed. considering we are renting and will move probably a few times during this bed's lifetime, I figured that was the safest bet. I did get a suggestion to use heavy duty hinges and just pop the pin out when needed, but the brackets were under $13 for the whole bed and I had a coupon - couldn't beat that and they will be way easier to work then pulling a pin out.

Here they are:


They will be totally invisible from the outside too :) I found them at Rockler.com.

As for the building progress, I got the 2 headboards all puttied and sanded and they just need paint. I still have to sand the rails and attach the slat supports but that's pretty simple. then of course need to paint them as well.

I actually talked to 2 friends today about my project, guy friends. If they were standing near me I probably woulda slapped them around a bit lol. The first was asking me to name all the tools I used and then asked if I made sure to use safety goggles and if I had a level as if somehow I wouldn't know to use those. Of course I got the last laugh when first - he asked me if I had a level AFTER I told him I had a combination square - which for anyone who works with tools you know that it is a square with a level build right in, and second - he opened this blog and saw my pictures and was amazed lol. The second friend saw the pictures and said "they were better then I expected they would be" and seemed to think it was a compliment. He tried to cover his tracks and say that most women wouldn't use tools or build anything. Shame shame shame. But I know for a fact that many women are proving him wrong on a daily basis and reminded him about that little song "Anything you can do, I can do better!" lol.


For kicks, check it out!

Headboard #2: DONE!!

Well the glue from earlier dried so I was able to get cracking on the top boards and my clamps, although pretty, weren't quite big enough to hold the wood in place so I had to use screws in addition to the glue and "clamps"

Ya like my impromptu clamps? Hubbys weight bar weights with ankle weights thrown on top for extra weight :)


Had a little minor countersinking emergency because I countersunk the screws a tad too much on one section and created a nice gash in my dining room table. oops lol. But thankfully we got the screws out and redid them elsewhere and nothing a little wood putty can't fix.

I blame the ancient drill, see the one on the right lol. All his fault :).


So once I got that all screwed in and drilled some pilot holes for the posts, I solicited help from hubby to hold the center piece so I could attach the posts. We also got the top board on as well.



So now both are done and we are most of the way done on the bottom bunk. The side rails are already cut and hanging out in Joey's shed, so all that's left to build is the frame that holds the slats and add the slats. Then lots of sanding and then painting then assembling.





I couldn't decide if I wanted to stain, paint, or just leave natural and clear coat it. I love the natural look but the wood's color tone is different because the posts are fir and kinda reddish and the rest is white pine. I don't think a dark stain would look good in Alyssa's room cause everything is so light and cheery in there. So I'm thinking I'll prime and paint it white and then when i build myself a desk I'll use a dark stain for that instead :).

So far for time I spent about 3 hours last Saturday cutting and 3 hours on sunday cutting and assembling, and between lunch and dinnertime today, probably 1.5 hrs. So 7.5 hrs so far, and still within budget of the wood we bought. I only screwed up one cut (crossing fingers that i didn't just jinx myself lol)

Cya!

Lunchtime building

HI,

Well once the kid went to the babysitter today and I had a few minutes to spare at work (I work at home), I decided it was time for lunch, although I wasn't cooking :). I covered up my kitchen table with a sheet and decided to piece together the next headboard.

I was being lazy and didn't feel like bringing out the drills this time and after chatting on facebook with the famous Miss Ana over at Knock Off Wood, I knew that I could just use a nailer and use glue, or just try glue and clamps as the headboard was mainly decoration and the real power behind the beds were in the legs, rails, and slats and that's why those get screwed in. So since I'm too cheap to get a brad or finishing nailer to hold the wood while the glue dries, I opted just to use glue and clamps.

Using the tablecloth probably did more harm then good cause it made it hard to slide the wood, but I didn't wanna scratch my table :).


(I just noticed my clamps match my tablecloth haha)

It seems my wood was slightly off because at the beginning I was all even on all sides but as I moved along my rails started to not touch the ends of the headers. I figured I cut them a tad short cause of the kerf (thickness) of the saw blade so I kept on going. I realized at the end that I probably cut them right but I think the angling of the wood was off or the headers were not totally straight.

This is how I was shown to make sure it's square - measuring from opposite corners - the measurement should math. Of course mine didn't. I'm like less then a 1/2" off. not too bad and not much i can really do about it now since it's all glued and clamped.





But considering it only took me 20 mins or so to get it all lined up, I think it looks pretty good. I still have to glue on the top board and I think once that glue dries I probably will drill some screws through at least a few spots to make sure it all stays nice and pretty. Then I'll have to recruit a helper, AKA hubby, to help with the posts as someone needs to hold steady while the other uses the drill.

And now I'm off to actually eat something on my lunch lol.

Headboard: DONE!

Thanks to another sunny day yesterday, one headboard is all assembled! I finished up the cutting for the bottom bunk.



Then the boys watched the kids while Joey and I did the assembly work.



Gotta check out Joey's shirt in that pic :). I gave it to her for Christmas. If you can't read it, it says "SARCASM: just another service that I offer" Very fitting lol.

The spacers in between the headboard rails were a bit off, probably 1/8 of an inch or so, so I had to cut them down a bit to fit perfectly.

We also had a bit of issues trying to use nails as suggested by the plans because we didn't have a nail gun and I'm not about to buy one. So we decided on screws and I made a mid-day run to Home Depot for some tiny screws.

One of the tiny little drill bits is somewhere in the headboard because it never came back out lol, but we were able to use another bit I had luckily because we needed to pre-drill all the holes.

Here is the completed headboard, with headless me standing behind it :) That should give you an idea the size of this thing.


It's really heavy, and those 4x4s on the ends were killer to attach, mostly for Joey cause I did the drilling and she did the screwing. We used hubby's drills and the screwing one is ancient and weighed like 10 lbs lol. Not easy to hold in mid air and apply pressure.

We packed up everything and put it away and I brought all the cut up wood for the foot-board home so I can build it here. Of course I live in an apartment so hopefully my neighbors don't mind the noise of the drill over and over.

The headboard still needs sanding so I'll probably sand them both at the same time so I only have to clean up the mess once :).

I left the rails for the bed at Joey's there is no way that I can maneuver 2x8s in this place for assembly work.

This is going to be one monster heavy duty bed :).

Alyssa still keeps asking every day if I finished building her a bunk bed yet. She sat at Joey's in the window watching us work. Today she asked daddy if he would make her a bunk bed and he said no, and that mama is making her one. She goes "ya and I saw her and she made one and then has to make another and another". She keeps walking by the headboard and rubbing the wood, and I just hope she doesn't get a splinter lol.

It looks really nice in the house, I'd love to stain it instead of painting it but we will see. Alyssa wants pink and just not sure how I feel about quite that much pink lol. It looks great natural, but it's not "pretty" like a pink bed would be. lol.

HI, it's not raining - Can I come over?

That's how I greeted Joey this morning when I got up and realized how nice it was and how very very wrong the weather channel website was the other day. All week long I've been dreading another rainy weekend and it even said there might be snow. thankfully that didn't happen and it was in the 50's and breezy but sunny and not a cloud in the sky.

Joey's hubby was not able to watch her munchkin so I was flying solo again today but I was able to get a good amount done. I brought hubby's garden wagon with me to haul wood from the shed to the patio - gotta love bungee cords :).

And ya know you are looking at a mom's toolbox when you find a stray pull-up mixed in with drills and saws lol.

Just about all the wood for the headboard and footboard for the bottom bunk is cut. I did all the headers and the rails and the spacers and the posts. The only things I have left for that bunk are the side rails and slats/mattress supports and the top rail for each end of the head and footboards.

If I didn't have to haul everything out and then put it all away I could have been much more productive, lol, but that's life without having your own place to work.

Here's the wood, another mama specialty - wood stacked in an old laundry basket :)


You can't really see them in the pic but the spacers that go in between the rails - my neck is killing from bending over measuring them. 28 pieces, each one only 2.5" long lol. That's a lotta little pieces!!

Oh and just a little side note as a warning for others not to be as dumb as I was today - if you are using a saw that has a sawdust bag, and you take off the bag to unzip it and empty it - when you put it back on - be sure to zip it back up. If/When you don't, you end up with a nice little mess all over the ground and yourself.

I think another half day of cutting and I can get everything sanded and then start assembly. I'm building it in pieces so I can paint it and then transport here to put it together :). Once one bed is done I'll do the 2nd one and then the ladder and side rails.

And now that I'm done sharing I need to jump off here and jump in the shower. Saw dust is itchy!

Gotta Love a Supportive Hubby.....

....even when he thinks you are a bit nuts lol.

Since I wanted to try out some new wood stains with what I learned in my last blog post, we picked up some vinegar at the dollar store yesterday, but couldn't find any steel wool. I tried walmart today and they didn't have any either.

So hubby on his own offered to go to home depot and get me some today :) and he got me a couple pieces of copper tubing so I can test and see if it will work better then pennies to make the copper one that turns green.

And once he got home he even did all the preparations and made the mixtures for me while i finished up work :).

Now I just have to wait about a week to see if any chemical reaction happens, in the meantime I got 4 types of tea to test out and see what kind of fun stains they can make :). Hubby happens to have a scrap piece of 2x4 in the livnig room (yea I know, we're weird lol) so I can use that to test :).

New ideas on how to "finish" furniture

HI :)

I was goggling around last night looking for plans to build an aquarium stand for hubby and found another interesting blog where another female tool user was reviewing some different ways to finish wood with stuff like tea and vinegar mixtures :)
http://www.toolgirl.com/toolgirl/2010/03/staining-wood-with-cheap-natural-and-nontoxic-tea.html#more

Of course geeky me decided to Google more about the vinegar mixtures to see if there were other methods and why it works. I foun another site that gives more ideas on how to stain wood:
http://www.woodworking.org/WC/Garchive01/3_27colorants.html

So basically if i throw a clean steel wood puff into a container and pour in vinegar, in a week or so I'll have a brown-like stain (I'm building with pine, not oak). it's called iron acetate when done.

Or I could use tea and test a few different teas to see what color I'd get, and if I wanted to deepen the color then use the iron acetate on top of it. Very cool.

Then the other idea was putting pennies in vinegar to get a turquoise stain, but the problem I saw is that I don't know if that mixture has a different name or if it is copper acetate, but if it is copper acetate, I read online that there used to be pigment made with that and some kind of arsenic and it was toxic. Now I'd assume it was the arsenic that made it that way, but i wanted to me sure.

But you know me, I can't just stay wondering, so lucky for me I have a science geek in the family :). I emailed my other sister Randi (told ya boys name run in the family lol) and she is having a PhD geek at her job check out the toxicity for me before i attempt to use it. Thanks chicky!

so now i have another side project of course, which is cool because I have scrap wood at home so I can test various teas and maybe some food coloring mixtures to see what I can make. I can't build until its a weekend and sunny, but I can color swatches on wood anywhere, so that should keep me busy for a bit :).

If anyone has any suggestions on what kind of teas to try to get some cool colors, let me know :).

Oh, and I did find a very cool plan for an aquarium stand that i can re-size for hubby's 55 gallon tank, so stay tuned after I build the bunk bed :).



(pic courtesy of Geothermal Aquaculture Research Foundation, Inc)

Another day, another step closer!

Busy busy day today. Hubby was nice enough to deliver all my wood from last night's home depot adventure to Joey's first thing this morning and bring the car back so i could go on another excursion today. I was on a mission to find non-pressure treated 4x4x8s and that was pretty hard cause apparently every lumber yard only has PT or cedar. I finally found some in stock at a different home depot 20 mins away after checking out 2 lumber yards. But I did get some good 2x8s at the 1st lumber yard since HD's were all too crappy. The 2nd lumber yard was also a hardware store and I scored a great deal on a portable miter saw table.

So me and the munchkin got all the wood at HD (while the munchkin decided the push cart was a jungle gym of course lol). We filled up the car to head to Joey's and this time at least i could see in all directions :o)

Hubby and BIL were hard at work in the backyard doing some cleanup but helped unload the rest of the lumber and brought out the boxes for the saw. A friend from church came by and he helped teach me some safety tips for the miter saw and helped me get it set all up. I did a few practice cuts and I think I'll be nervous for a few tries but since I have about a million pieces of wood to cut, lol, I should be an old pro in no time.

I assembled the miter saw table, which was surprising easy as it was partially pre-assembled. Of course it figures that I tightened one of the nuts much too tight and it snapped the bolt right in half so unfortunately my afternoon was spent back at home depot lol. I also stopped at sears for a new saw blade because the one the sears guy recommended to my hubby was the wrong kind lol. I would have done all the shopping at sears but for some reason they are a hardware store that doesn't sell screws. seriously. that makes no sense.

All in all a productive day I'd say. All the lumber is stacked in joey's shed and the tools and saw are in her workshop inside the house. I now know how to use my new toy, so next time i go over, I actually get to get to work. :)

Here is my new toy


and here is the pretty new miter table from a distance :). It has "arms" to support the wood. The screws from that to screw down the miter saw to it are the ones I snapped - so word of caution - never over tighten your screws or you may find yourself at a hardware store that doesn't sell screws :).


That's all for now :)

First project: A bunk bed

I decided to jump right into building and make something that I've been wanting for my baby girl but couldn't afford any quality ones. A bunk bed. we checked out local stores and even the furniture wholesalers and discounters but the ones under $500 were all wobbly crap, to put it nicely. if I am scared to sit my fat butt on the bed next to my child, I will not spend $500 on it. That would be idiotic.

So i stumbled upon many different building plans online and while many of the free plans were ok, nothing really grabbed me. Most of the free plans had horizontal boards spaced out from floor to the top on each end. They looked cheap and camp-like. I wanted more traditional and cute. One that could be used for many years and not look like we were at sleepaway camp about to get chopped up by a serial killer (Please tell me i'm not the only one who remembers these pathetic horror movies)

I'm too cheap to buy a building plan, so I kept on searching. I hit the jackpot and found Ana's blog, Knock Off Wood. She has an awesome blog dedicated to helping women get out in the world of tools and get to building. She is a genius. She looks at various name brand solidly built furniture and then whips up very simple to read pans on how to build each piece. you will be seeing a lot of mention of her blog here, so might as well bookmark it now. I have quite the extensive list of project I want to tackle.

Anyway, she created a plan for a bed that was inspired by the Land of Nod's "simple bed". This is the perfect bunk bed for miss Alyssa. She saw it and loved it and the picture is now up on my fridge while she anxiously waits for me to "build it now" lol. She doesn't quite get the concept of patience.

This is the mock-up of her sketch for the beds:


Isn't it awesome? I don't think i'll go with those colors though lol. They are just to show the different pieces. If you want to see the plans, click here. just keep in mind that they are based on building 2 twin beds, and those plans you can get by clicking here.

My sister, Jo, who we also call Joey, said she'd help me build it and will let me built it at her house since she has a back patio. Yay! thanks Joey! (Yes, boy names run in the family).

So today's adventure took me to home depot and I got almost all my lumber that we need. I drove my clown car, affectionately known as the mom-mobile by hubby, home filled to the brim with pine lumber and grinning the whole way because I'm sure I looked ridiculous. Here's a pic from my door :). Couldn't even see out the passenger side and used a baby blanket to protect the front windshield :).


And here is the view from the hatchback!


Tomorrow hubby will empty the clown car for me off at Joey's so I can head with the munchkin to one more lumber yard to get the last few pieces of wood. Hopefully hubby gets done early with helping my BIL (brother in law, Joey's hubby) with yard work so he can watch the munchkin so I can get to work.

:)

Mama Rae's got her tools and is ready to go!

thanks to Ana, at Knock Off Wood's blog, I've decided to delve into the world of wood working, mainly furniture. I have always been pretty good with tools and am generally good at figuring out how stuff goes together, and I am a HUGGGGEEEE bargain hunter. So it only makes sense that I would combine and decide to play with some big girl toys and make my own furniture instead of throwing my money down the drain.

I may be an avid "Wally World" shopper, but there are just some things they do not have, and one of them is quality furniture (or good produce but that's a blog for a different day lol). I love antique styles of furniture, not so much rustic or country, but definitely not modern. Give me a dry sink any day over a fancy console table :) Speaking of dry sinks, if I ever have another kid I totally need anew one of those. They make awesome changing tables - the changing pad fits perfectly and the kid won't fall out and there are drawers and cabinets for supplies. Needless to say I'm a firm believer in creating new uses for old stuff. This is why I stalk yard sales, thrift stores, and consignment shops as often as possible, even when it's freezing cold up here in NH. My last dry sink actually came from a thrift store - was $10 and it lasted about 3 years up til we moved and I ripped the leg off in the doorway (oops!). now ya know why I need a new one, even though my baby girl is no longer a baby and is a self-proclaimed "big girl" :o).

If you are reading this for the first time and don't know me, here's a little bio. I'm Rae, 31, married to Lawrence, and have a beautiful and fiesty little 4 yr old named Alyssa, who we also call "baby girl". I'm also a step-mom to Lawrence's daughter who is 17. We are fur parents as well, although I'm much more of a furball lover then hubby is. We have Midnight, our 6 yr old lab, and Candie, my 10 yr old kitty. We would have more but currently live in apartment and can only have 2. I volunteer with a pit bull rescue based in NY and before you even think it - no they are not bad dogs. They are awesome dogs with a bad rap and have been known for many years as being incredible family dogs, they were even called "nanny dogs" many years back. People decided they wanted to fight them against each other an because of their loyal nature to their owner, they obliged, launching a sad history of dog fighting that still exists today. I won't go on and on with details but just know that I love the little buggers :). Now I'm not a fan of all animals, sorry. Rodents are gross, especially field mice who sneak in during the winter lol. Hamsters and gerbils are cute, at other people's houses. Not mine. Snakes, spiders, lizards - not for me. Fish are ok, hubby has an obsession with fish. One day maybe I'll build him a new tank stand :).

Anyway, I am a work at home mom, and work as a Dispatcher for an internet company. Basically i tell a group of guys what to do and where to go all day to install and repair business' internet and phone service. I know, exciting stuff. But it works for me for now. I'm also in college online with not a clue what I want to be when I grow up. Hubby is a school bus driver. He hates it but it's a paycheck and it works until he gets into and finishes school to be an electrician.

That's about it, thanks for viewing :)

PS: I cannot spell, lol. I type much too fast for my brain to comprehend and type the right letters. My keyboard is also possessed and doesn't like to capitalize anything and I only sometimes catch the mistakes.