This is for you, Judy...

A friend and coworker, upon reading my last post re boxes and crates, suggested that I make a hexagonal box. This one is for you, Judy...

Caren wanted cubbies in the closet for storing small odds and ends. I wasn't thrilled about the location that she chose for them... it messed with my fung shway.... but decided to build a prototype for her out of scrap that was lying around. Judy, if you count the sides you will see that I kinda half-@ssed it. But, Caren is happy. Now I have to build two or three more...

All's Quiet in Tahoe

While President's Day weekend was a zoo in South Lake Tahoe, things were pretty quiet around the house. Work has slowed to a virtual crawl. We've pretty much finished with the kitchen, living room and hallway, so we've taken some time to relax and enjoy the place a little bit.

Instead, we've filled the days with skiing, running, hiking, and board games. We've even caught up with a few episodes of House, thanks to iTunes downloads.

We have, however, been slowly picking away at the closet in the master bedroom. I don't plan on posting any pics of it until it is complete, which may be awhile, but at least we have shelving and a place to hang clothes.

The garage is full of left over bits and pieces of previous projects, mostly short boards of varying species, widths and lengths. Not being one to throw out even the shortest pieces, I decided to make a few boxes for storage in our closet. We'd originally thought we'd use baskets purchased at Target or Walmart or Michael's to store our odds and ends in, but costs are adding up and buying a bunch of baskets was not in the budget.

Boxes crafted out of leftover boards are cheap... free really, monetarily, but if one considers the amount of labor put in to making them, they are very costly.

We've made several editions of each of the above boxes and crates to store clothes, ski equipment, backpacks, and the like. Each looks pretty simple, but I've experimented with different types of joinery throughout. Pocket hole screws, rabbits, butt and pass, etc. Some day I'd like to try my hand at dovetailing, but haven't been bold enough yet.

I've done most of the saw and router work, Caren has done most of the finish work. She's experimented as well. Oil, whitewash, whitewashed oil, oiled whitewash, distressing, and antiquing. One of the nice things about going with a rustic motif is that nothing has to be perfect. In fact, the less perfect something is, the more perfect it is. I dig how each of the above has turned out almost as much as I dig not having piles of clothing and equipment stacked in corners and along walls.

I promise that I will post pics of the closet soon, but we do have a weekend or three worth of work to go...

Sketches

We don't have a television in Tahoe. We don't have internet in Tahoe. We don't have a lot of reading material in Tahoe. Instead, we spend the evenings lost in conversation. Inevitably, the conversation turns to the house...

"What do you think about this?"

"We could do that!"

Soon we come to a general consensus about a "next" project.

Shortly thereafter rough ideas are sketched out on paper. Some people work from exact, scale drawings. I don't. I prefer to work towards some rough idea. Form and shape change along the way, sometimes dictated by materials on hand, sometimes dictated by the limitations of tools available. We never really know what the finished project will look like. Sometimes we finish a project, scrap it, and start all over again. Eventually we end up with something that we are happy with...

Below are early sketches of some of those "ideas." In some cases I've included pictures of the finished product for comparison purposes. Some turned out remarkably similar to the original idea... some are completely different.

A working drawing of the fireplace wall...

The finished fireplace wall.

The first rendition of the sink base... 

The later version of the same sink base...

The finished sink...

Caren's very early sketch of the stove wall...

A nearly complete stove wall...

A sketch of the pot rack...

Ideas for the refrigerator wall including an early version of the dish rack...

One version of the kitchen layout using manufactured cabinets from one website or another...

Another version of the kitchen using manufactured cabinetry...

A scale drawing of the final version of the dish rack, including a cut list...

I can't tell you how many sleepless nights I've laid in bed designing and redesigning each and every project... dimensions, construction details, tool limitations. Once the mind gets turning over, it is very difficult to stop it as it skips around from one detail to the next. The sketches above are starting points, and, at the same time, finished ideas... then I try to sleep, and they change completely. Construction starts, and everything changes again. Final installation occurs, and minor changes are made. If I sit on the couch in the evenings, sans television and internet, I see changes that I can make in projects that I thought I finished months ago.

It is about the journey... not the destination!

The Museum Wall

When you hail from a big family (think three siblings and three sibling's spouses) Christmas shopping can be challenging. We've solved that problem in our family with a Christmas drawing. Every year, the grandkids... my boys along with my nieces and nephews... place all of the adult names in a hat and draw them out to determine which adult buys a gift for which other adult.  Pretty simple... probably a variant on many a family's tradition. To further simplify the process, no Christmas lists are allowed. No one can request, hint, or otherwise state what they desire as a gift. Instead, a theme is chosen, and one's gift must fit within the theme. In the past, themes have been water, sports, and outdoors among others.

Fitting a gift into the theme and making sure that the receiver of the gift actually likes the gift can be a challenge in itself. But, that may be part of the fun. Sometimes one has to get pretty creative. For example, I was chosen to buy a gift for my sister-in-law the year that the theme was outdoors.  I could have bought her an umbrella or a jacket or gardening tools. Instead, knowing that she already had and umbrella, gardening tools and numerous jackets, I bought her a gift certificate to a local day spa. The catch was that, when it came time for her to open her present on Christmas Day, I made her open her present outside.  Get it? outdoors... outside! I am so clever!

This Christmas past, the theme was antique. My younger brother received a wood and brass fly reel from the distant past. My dad received two tickets to a Tony Bennet concert, and my sister-in-law received very old black and white pictures of distant ancestors, carefully mounted in antique frames. I received one (1) antique snowshoe. Caren received a matching one.

Immediately I began picturing The Museum Wall...

We mounted the snowshoes above our barnwood coat rack and began cruising Craigslist and Ebay for the skis and poles. I wanted to put an antique ice-axe on the wall as well, but we seem to have run out of room. I haven't given up entirely on the ice-axe, but it will probably end up on a different wall.

It seems a little cliche, having antique skis and snowshoes mounted on the wall in a Tahoe cabin, but each piece speaks a little bit to the history of the sports we love to do, so we are more than happy to display them in our little house.

Believe it or not, mounting the skis and poles on The Museum Wall was all the work that I completed last weekend... Instead, I skied and hiked in the snow.