More Crib Fun

Crib is starting to come together. All 4 sides have now been glued and by now should be finished drying. Next step is to fit all the sides together with hardware, cut the base part of the crib that the mattress goes on, treat with teak oil, and put on about 6-7 coats of finish. We're almost there!

Leg pieces before assembly:
One side piece after being assembled:
Mike glues one headboard/footbard (I don't know which) together:
I think this is the "headboard" - all assembled:
I believe this is the "footboard", though I may be wrong.

Microburst/tornado puts crib building on hold

Didn't get as much done this weekend as we hoped since Mike spent Friday evening clearing limbs after a microburst/tornado hit Manhattan/our driveway and M/D came out Saturday morning to help with limb clearing as well. The Double Diamond Ranch is now down several very old trees, but the small baby ones growing in our driveway gravel are still there.

View of driveway from the road.

Oak tree down across driveway by the post-rock.
Same tree - looks like string cheese
Limb down nearby
Already dying apple tree dies even more
Pine tree in the orchard snapped in half - you can see where it broke around the middle of the picture
One pear tree lost his pears.
Want some?

I bet the crib plans were written by Mal Evans

Pictures from this weekend's crib-build.

Dad & Mike work on rounding a dowel thing to go on the top-rounded-part of the crib headboard and footboard.


Semi-dry-assembled crib sideboard. The wood color really isn't showing up in the pictures as well as it does in person. It's a bit darker and richer in person.

Project Build-A-Crib Begins

Several weekends ago we went to a nice KC Hardwood lumber store and picked out some Sapele lumber to build baby's crib. Sapele is also used in Cadillacs and apparently to make guitar bodies as well. It has a nice rich color with a subdued pretty grain. We like it a lot. It's an "exotic" wood from Africa. Neat.
The next weekend was spent mostly planning and cutting boards down to size/re-sanding them with the sander-tool-thing (maybe dad or Mike should be blogging this since they might actually know what things are called).

Weekend after that (this last weekend) they made a lot of progress with getting the spindle slat things cut down to size, all the legs cut, and the back/front piece things put together. Lots of sanding left to do not to mention all of the assembly, but things are definitely coming along nicely so far! Here are some pictures.

Spindle slat things that have been routered and cut.
Mike draws out the pattern for the legs
Then cuts said legs
And sands them
While dad works on the curved back and front piece thing that is apparently made by putting 3 spliced pieces of wood together. The pattern we're using only suggested gluing, but since dad has 33293023 tools, he also biscuit jointed it.
Curvy piece drying with lots of clamps. See the little blocks with each clamp? They measure the exact angle the curve is supposed to dry at.

And what did I do while this was taking place?

I made a monkey/peanut.

Renovating = done. Unless we do the basement.

Project laundry room/bathroom is complete. Here are some "after" pictures - sorry they took so long, it has been a very busy few weeks.

View of the bathroom/basement door looking from our back door into the laundry room.

The new home of my sewing/craftish area looking in from the living room. The sewing desk is exactly where Granny had it (and the exact same desk/sewing machine, too...)
A view of the sewing/craftish area looking from the bathroom - you can also see the washer/dryer and a new cleaning cabinet along the wall.
Sorry, this bathroom is impossible to get pictures of, but here is the best I could do - you can see the shower behind the door and the new sink/vanity where the old tub used to be. The toilet is where it always was in the corner, but it is not very photogenic.
Now since most of the renovations (except landscaping) are pretty much done, I think I'll make this into a baby update and/or random Double Diamond Ranch Adventures blog.

Renovations: Phase 3 begins

Phase 3 began late this winter/early this spring and is still continuing. Renovating the laundry room and small extra bathroom.

But why would anyone want to redo this gorgeous bathroom?

And no laundry room is complete without rust stains on the floor.
Mom starts to tear down wallpaper. Fun job.
Dad tears out the extremely gross sink that hasn't run well in years. Or ever?
Bathroom is re-sheetrocked with waterproof stuff and re-plumbed so the shower will go where the sink used to be and the sink will go where the weird tiny tub used to be. Toilet stays as is.
Wallpaper and floor have all been removed. Junk has not, but I'm still expected to do my laundry somehow...
Dad emerges from the even junkier basement with painting tools. Think we should renovate the basement next!??!
Dad and I prime the laundry room. Baby makes a small appearance.
Mike and Mom prime the bathroom.
Whoa. Why does this subdued dark blue we picked out look more like an eccentric little boy's room? We realized after it had all dried (hoped it would dry darker..nope) that the paint chip didn't even match the hue of the paint on the wall at all.
Got a new can of paint and made them re-mix until it matched better. Still not perfect, but definitely better than that crazy bright blue. Oops, we forgot to paint the bottom?
Wainscoting going up. It's all up now except corner pieces and the "shoe."
Bathroom is a khaki color, but I don't have a good picture of it yet. The floor tile is almost done - it's done in the laundry room. Renovation blunder #1233292.5: we bought all floor tile when we started the project several years ago so all tile would match throughout the house. Apparently we under-estimated by 2 whole boxes (40 tiles) how much we would need, so we ran out. Of course, the brand of tile we used is phasing out and no longer produces this exact tile. We now have about 25 tiles left in the bathroom that either won't match completely or...who knows.....we haven't gotten that far yet.....

Renovation blunder #1233293: Dad power nails the trim up around the "pocket door" from the living room to the laundry room. He accidentally nails the door open so it can no longer slide.....he does this twice.

And no renovation is complete without your toilet sitting on the porch for months.
Next up: finishing floor tile (hopefully with a similar tile design on the edges of the bathroom and no one will notice?), putting up trim around windows, painting all wainscoting and trim, installing all bathroom items (new shower, new sink vanity, old toilet), finding some sort of cabinet for my cleaning supplies and brooms and stuff. Almost done?

Renovations: Phase 2

Phase 2 happened last fall and a little early this spring. We stained the entire outside of the house and garage. After blasting clean the real wood siding, it still had lots of extremely dark and extremely light patches from sun and weathering over the years, so we had to go with an opaque stain - it looks like we painted, but it is actually wood stain. Went with a brown (anything else just would seem weird) and a khaki-ish trim color.

Why is mom taking down the basketball goal while dad watches? Who knows. There is now a nice basketball goal-shaped patch on the house where the texture of the wood is different since it didn't weather as much as the wood around it. Lovely.

Dad starts staining the garage. It looks a lot brighter when the stain is wet - the finished product is darker and more subdued.

Mike stains trim.
Dad stains the "uppers"
Mike and Dad tear out the old doors. (You can see our new porch light in this picture, too. It matches the one on the front porch and our new post-light by the driveway)
New front door.

Next up: Phase 3 - laundry room/bathroom.