Since I start work on Monday, Jeff and I decided to tackle a bunch of outdoor projects that we've been procrastinating getting done.
On Wednesday, we decided to start with mulching the beds. George "supervised" from the sidelines. He was as happy as a clam for most of the day, crawling around in pursuit of good twigs to chew on, eating dirt, cruising in circles around trash cans, and climbing on top of the overturned wheel barrow. During his afternoon nap, we worked on putting a swing up in the tree. Since he loves the swing at the park, Karen wanted him to have one in time for summer. George was happy to get to try it out after his nap, and again multiple times yesterday. (Today was awfully chilly.) He giggled for the first few minutes that he was in it, at which point we decided to grab the camera. Of course, the giggles stopped at that point and he just kind of chilled in his new swing.
(Oh, and in non-outdoor-project news, George now loves playing patty cake and randomly decides to "mark it with a G" for us, as in the above photo. He has also learned how to kiss.)
On Thursday, we decided that I would build George a picnic table (yes, really) while Jeff worked on cleaning out the gutters. One of my favorite blogs,
Knock Off Wood, recently posted plans for building two children's picnic tables. I've been itching to build something of hers, but Jeff keeps rightfully knocking down my ideas. It doesn't make sense to build something like an entertainment center when we don't even know what kind of space we'll be working with when we get our own place. I wanted to build her Farmhouse Bed, but our furniture is squeezed in our room so much now that the extra width that would come from the frame would mean that we could no longer fit our one nightstand (with alarm clock and table lamp) in the room and we would no longer be able to walk on that side of the bed. There were another dozen designs that I wanted to try out, but again, we don't know what kind of space we'll be working with when we move. I had resigned myself to not building anything for the time being, and then she posted the two picnic tables. We have outdoor space to put something like that. George likes trying to climb on the child-sized picnic table at the park, and will soon enough be at the stage where he can sit at a small table to eat or play with toys. I decided to pull the trigger. We ended up choosing to build the
Modern Kid's Picnic Table, in part because the Martha Stewart image that she posted of the stacked benches serving as shelves convinced us that it would be more versatile and could double as extra storage inside if we needed it too - in the winter, perhaps? In retrospect, the other one would have probably been a bit easier.
The project took significantly longer than I was expecting based on the other comments in her blog from people who have completed her plans. Somewhat in my defense, power tools and babies don't mix. So George was banished to the yard, and while he was happy eating twigs and pulling grass out of the ground on Wednesday, he decided that enough was enough and he loudly let me know that it was time to play. At that point, Jeff and I decided to trade off working and playing with George. (Later, when Jeff and I were both trying to get our respective projects done by dinner - ha! - Karen and Cary were kind enough to step in and take George on a walk.) This gave me some time to make a bunch of cuts and screw things together, in between nursing and playing sessions.
Safety first!
We also didn't have quite the right tools for the job. We have a miter saw box and hand saw, but the saw seriously sucks and there was no way that I could make that many cuts using it. Instead, I marked all of the cuts using an angle and/or a square (depending on the cut) and used a circular saw to cut them, but it just was not as accurate as using fancier equipment would have been. I also somehow managed to miss the part about using a square to make sure that the legs are a perfect 90 degrees when attaching them, which came back to bite me in the butt. I had the table and chairs mostly finished by dinner time yesterday, but things just weren't square and I was exhausted and I decided that I was going to finish, damn it! Then Jeff came out and gently pointed out that there were serious gaps where the legs and top met. We ended up taking a couple of legs off of their respective tops, and then it was almost dinner time so we just left it. I learned a couple of big lessons:
Make sure that all cuts are straight and that the angles are correct the first time. Not doing this more than doubled the amount of time this project took to complete.
Do not just start attaching things because you're getting tired and want it done. Just step away.
If you take stuff apart, make sure that you clean all wood glue up while it's still wet. It's just easier.
I woke up this morning still tired and very sore, but since I really wanted to get the project done before George's birthday party next weekend, I plunged ahead. We started off with something kind of like this:
Together, as George was napping, Jeff and I took each of the legs off. The legs looked good enough that we didn't want to take them apart entirely. I mean, while they weren't square, everything came together fairly flush and they seemed pretty strong. So I figured out how much to take off the ends so that the part that attaches to the table or touches the ground would be completely straight, and so that the two ends of each leg would be the same height. (I was also having wobble issues.) I then got to work with a plane and sander, and in one extreme example I took the circular saw to a leg. I also cut a 2x4 down to 31.5" long to work as a center support for the table.
I then got to work putting everything back together. The benches went fairly smoothly, but then when attaching the top to the table I somehow drove one of the nails directly between the two 1x4s in the leg and it split and the shorter 1x4 just fell off, and then when I tried to pry the leg off (I ran out of screws and was using nails at this point), the center support came with it. Somehow, in the middle of this, my thumb started bleeding and dripping all over the table. I almost broke down at this point, but Jeff brought me two things that helped a lot- lots of George hugs and kisses (did I say earlier how much I like his newfound kissing ability?) and a big mug of hot chocolate with whipped cream. I got a second wind and managed to slowly get the blood cleaned off and everything put back together.
Here's George playing with the set just after I filled in some of the screw and nail holes with wood filler:
We found some cedar-tinted wood sealer at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, and so I used that to finish it.
The wood and the wood filler are supposed to be the same color, but the wood filler is clearly visible and it's bothering me. I earlier noticed that the wood filler is significantly darker when wet than dry, and the above photos were taken just after applying the sealant. I'm really hoping that the difference is less obvious once everything is adequately dry. If not, I'm debating painting it or leaving it as is. Terry and Cary said that George will probably color all over it and spill some lemonade on it, taking attention away from the wood filler, which is probably true. But still.
I kind of roll my eyes when people on Ana's "Bragging Board" say that their completed projects are far from perfect, as they always look so great in the photos, but I now understand completely. The wood filler's bothering me, plus one of the table legs is a bit shorter or longer than the others despite all of my work today, and so tomorrow I'm going to work on figuring out what exactly is going on and try to correct it. But, this is my first time trying to build building a piece of furniture and I mostly did it solo. Towards the end, I got out our dremel and carved into the underside of the bench that I built it for George Everett's first birthday. That's just something that you can't buy from a store.
