The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey June 2, 2013

Garden doings...

I've been pretty good about weeding out the garden, while preserving volunteers for replanting around the beds. I've got three volunteer tomato plants and several peppers. I have no idea what specific variety of either is likely to result ... but yummy is as yummy does. Here's the garden in progress, from a couple of days ago: As I write this, the wind is up, lightning all around, and rain the size of small hatchbacks is falling. The good news is that the garden is young. Big wind when the plants are large tends to blow things over, or even…

Brian Bilbrey May 31, 2013

15 years; Table done

Those are unrelated topics, as the semicolon indicates. First (as my lovely Marcia points out), I neglected to point out to all and sundry that we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary yesterday. We went out to Sly Horse Tavern for supper, to celebrate. It's good to be happy, eh? * * * Table done: I brought the table bits halfway up, and setup on the lawn, to show how pretty this is in full light. Then I hauled it back inside and upstairs, and properly attached the top to the apron. I'm nearly 80% done with this project. I've got…

Brian Bilbrey May 26, 2013

Memorial Day Weekend

A three day chore marathon, closing with the annual remembrance of those lost to us in active military service. I choose to be a bit more OCD about my duty to honor our losses. (Or, as @xeni noted the other day on twitter, CDO, because it SHOULD be alphabetized!) Saturday: I got the table apron and legs completed and assembled: Next on Saturday, but without any photographic evidence at this time, I got our hanging baskets populated and hung up on the front porch. The watering outlets are in the baskets, but that isn't set up with a supply yet,…

Brian Bilbrey May 19, 2013

Table work

I'm working on the table/desk now. It's got the cherry top that you've seen in early construction phase here. Now I'm assembling the apron. I bought the table legs from Osborne Wood Products. They'd have sold me the apron, too, but I was already stocked on the materials I needed for this. On Friday I did all the cuts. Today I did some round-over routing of the lower edges, cut a groove for the table top clips, and assembled the apron: The center stretchers are affixed with pocket screws. The angled pieces in the corners are glued and pinned -…

Brian Bilbrey May 15, 2013

Cabinet done

The completed cabinet The completed cabinet shows off it's party piece - a slide-out tray to make the computers easier to work on. Given the placement of the heavy stuff, though, it's clear I had to cleat the top of the unit to a stud in the wall - the weight of the two computers was enough to start it tilting forward. I'd expected that, but "tested" it, anyway. One computer, fine. Two? Not so much. It's also worth noting that I've got a half inch of dense closed-cell foam buffer between the computers and the tray, to cut down…