A WoodWork in Progress

Once I finished the side table from Steve Ramsey's course, I moved on to the next project on his list, the Harmony Bench. All of the pictures on the website of this bench had shown it being used as a true bench, sometimes placed in the garden, or in an entryway with a boot shelf nearby. I had another plan for it. It would be a long window-side table in the kitchen. The original course plan design was for the bench to be about 36 inches long. My window space is 70" wide, so I needed really straight pieces. I would also add some horizontal support in the middle, so the boards wouldn't bend. My version would need to be higher also so that it would be flush with the side of the window. The original design from the Weekend Woodworker course The lower shelf would be installed much lower than in the plans, so that it could actually be used as a shelf, rather than just a structural support. My wife decided on the finish that would be used. Because the wood I bought was simple pin...

I really got the bug at this point, and knew that woodworking was something I would be able to really pick up as a regular hobby. What I needed at this point was guidance. I needed a bit of training so that I could not only follow build plans, but use equipment correctly. I saw an advertisement on Facebook for Steve Ramsey's Weekend Woodworker online course . It was a bit pricey and the conversion to Canadian Dollars didn't help, but it included access to a lot of other build plans that I was interested in. So I asked the boss and we agreed I should do it. She has always let me buy things for my hobbies. For woodworking, she has encouraged me to buy any tools I needed. I signed up and watched the videos I had access to (released one week at a time). The first project was the Basic Mobile Workbench, which I didn't need. The next on the project list was the California Casual Side table. I didn't need it inside the house, so the intention was to make it for my wife to have...

After completing the potting table, I knew that I needed a better work surface. I was able to build a table for my wife, I should be able to build something for me too! The challenge I had was my work space. My garage is quite small, so I needed a work table that could be stored away when not being used. I did some research online and found a video for a fold-up workbench that stores on the wall. The link is here: https://youtu.be/dejyJEb9zgc The table in the video was too large for the space I had available. I needed to shorten the table, which would result in the legs hitting the far side of the frame. This is where I needed to make some weird modifications. I needed to offset the legs so that they would sit beside the others. The supports also would be hitting the other legs, so I needed to notch-out the legs. I needed to buy some chisels to do that. What I didn't know was that I was creating a 'half-lap' joint in the legs. I just thought I had come up with a neat ...

With my wife settling in to her gardening hobby, she requested a table that she could use for potting her plants. Until then, she had been using out patio table or the small ledges of the barbeque. A request was made for a true potting table that would be just for her. I looked up some online building plans for making a DIY potting bench. This is the plan I used for my build. https://www.thriftydecorchick.com/2011/08/diy-potting-bench-with-dad.html?m=1 The instructions were simple enough and I was able to customize it to suit the dimensions I wanted. At one point, I had to cut 5" off the feet because my own working height is much higher than that of my wife. For this build, I bought 4x4 cedar posts, and 1x6 cedar deck boards. They fit in my minivan fine and I started working. This was going to be an outside installation, so rough cut edges were fine, but the jigsaw was not ideal. Straight cuts are not easy with it, so I borrowed my neighbour's circular saw. That m...

In the Spring of 2020, my wife developed a taste for gardening. She wanted to make much of our backyard into a vegetable garden, and a flower garden that would attract bees and hummingbirds. This meant some landscaping would be needed. Ugly bushes were removed and old tree stumps were ground down by a landscaping service, leaving bare patches for fresh ideas. The first thing I built this year was a garden box. Probably the simplest thing one could build. I got some old cedar deck boards from a local Facebook group that re-gifts things for free. The boards were ugly, and were many different sizes. For a garden box, it didn't matter. I took the shortest of the long boards and decided that would be the length of the box. After that, I cut the boards I needed with a Ryobi jigsaw. I bought a Makita random orbital sander and removed as much old paint as necessary. I assembled the garden box walls and added a centre section to give more support. In the end, the box was 9' x 4' and...