Little Table Refinishing

Who needs a little card table?  No one, really, but...

Got quite messed up by rats while in storage, and it was already cracked and poorly repaired when I got it from my mother.  

I decided to put a little redwood stripe in it, for flair. It was also very handy. 

More Outlet!

So, for a long time during building, Melissa and I argued about how many and where outlets should go. I didn't want to put more in the kitchen because I wanted to limit the number of possible gadgets that could be run at any one time.  That was dumb.  With basically only one outlet available, when we both are doing stuff, often one person is in front of the one outlet.  

So, years after realizing this and pointing it out to people, I came up with an idea on how to add an outlet.  Once I had the idea, it only took me a couple of months to get around to doing it, and then only an hour to actually do the work.  

I cut a hole in the veneer and plywood between the pantry shelves and dropped in an outlet box.  The box sits inside the pantry shelf that houses a 5 gal bucket, which rarely comes out of there and doesn't bump it anyway.  

So, finally, we have increased our outlet accessibility by 100%

refurbished a hand plane

I didn't need another one - this is the exact same model as the one I use, that was my grandfather's... but I couldn't let it sit and rust away.  I hand carved (obviously) a replacement front handle and found a screw to replace the lost one.  Got all the rust off, and put the blade on my grinding wheel - ready to go!

New Woodshed

So, my junky old woodshed spot was looking pretty sad, and I decided this extra wet year that it isn't big enough to hold enough wood to get us through these longer wetter weeks, so this old thing had to go:

   

I went over to the neighbor's, who has a treasurer trove of materials that need to be pulled out of the woods.  I found these old HVAC ducts:

So I grabbed a bunch and flattened them out as recycled roofing tiles: 

Then organized some old-but-still-solid pallets:

and then put the roof on:

Rescued flat griddle

Happy with re-seasoning this old rusted griddle.  It's super heavy - like 50 lbs or so.  Great to fry a bunch of stuff over the fire, all at once. 

Bits of fix up

The third try at setting up a 'greenhouse' sort of cover for my work space, to keep things relatively dry and less sloppy.  I think the arched roof will succeed in not pooling up the water and crashing apart.

Finally got around to fixing up my 'ax hog log', the chopping block I use with hatchets and such.  It wasn't level, and struggled with the slope of the hillside. 

Kitchen Knife Handle project

Getting rid of the plastic in the house, one log at a time.

It's tricky to do this in the right order. Every step can fail - that is, the wood could crack, or the metal might fail, or something... so I'm always holding my breath until I get to the last bit. 

Seems good enough for our kitchen.