Bird house

Here is the most expensive bird house around. It is made out of oak plywood. Coen wanted to build a bird house for his mom really bad, so I agreed one Saturday morning. After getting to the garage I realized the only material I had enough of was the oak plywood. He was determined to build this bird house today so we used what we had on hand.

How to build an oak end table in one day.

I scored some nice red oak boards at the local Menards fairly cheap.

Since I have no real good way of making curved cuts, I decided a simple design would be the most practical. You can see here that I put my Kreg jig to good use. I used it for all of the joinery in the table. I know, it would have been nicer with some mortise and tenons or pins and dowels, but keeping it simple and quick was the goal. And the pocket holes make a great tight joint. Notice the mouse traps that I used as shims to set the reveal on the aprons. They were about 3/16" of an inch and worked perfectly.

Here it is almost done. I am trying to decide weather I want the bottom shelf higher or lower.

The low position won. I think it looks nicer that way and you can put a tall vase on it if you want. Now it just needs some stain and poly to make it last a long time.

The table is 25" H X 16" W X 18" D. If anyone is interested, I will post detailed dimensions of the components.

Here it is with a first coat of stain.

-t

Pergola

I have made up my mind to build a pergola over the patio at my house. In researching my pergola, I have come across a ton of sites that list ideas and plans for them. Some for a fee and some for free. I am pretty sure I want to have just a standard pergola, however I have a bit of an odd shape. Instead of being a square it will be a rectangle, and this is causing me some headache. Most plans are for a 9x9, 10x10, 12x12 etc. so I will be going off the grid a little.

I plan on using this blog post to keep track of my ideas and document my progress. Since it is only March, I have a little time before construction begins. So here are my first steps: research and planning.

First I have looked at these websites:

1. http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/pergola/3352816

2. http://diygardenplans.com/pergolaplans/

Here is a picture of a beautiful pergola. This is very similar to what I am planning.

http://s907.photobucket.com/albums/ac276/baconaway/?action=view&current=patio.jpg

This photo came from this thread:

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/porch/msg0314220528218.html

More later.

UPDATE!

It is July and I finally got to building the pergola. Here are some construction pictures. We will eventually stain the wood black, but it will have to dry out for several months before we can apply any stain.

I am happy with the way it turned out. It is really beefy with 6x6 post, 2 2x12 girders at each side, 2x8 purlins, and 2x2 lattice. I will add 4x4 angle bracing at each post as well.

I put the posts 36 inches in the ground with 4 bags of concrete at each post, so it should be nice and solid for a long time.

Now that that is finished, I can move on to the side patio.

Day trading and losing weight

I know the two are not really related, but in my world they seem to be. I am listening to an audiobook called "The Big Short." and the only time I listen to it is when I am running on the treadmill. This means that the only time I am thinking about the stock market is when I am losing weight. I need a treadmill with a built in Scotttrade account for all of the ideas this book is giving me.

New outfeed / assembly table

Here is a picture of my new outfeed/assembly table. It will be on casters, and can be moved out of the way when not in use. I built it out of standard 2x4's with a MDF top.

Here is the table being put to use. I am putting together new slipper chairs for the wife. This is just an assembly however, I did not make these.

New saw

Here is a picture of my new saw. It is the Grizzly Polar Bear Series hybrid saw.

t

Newspapers and the future

Obviously I have a stake in the future of newspapers, but I am getting very bored with all of the talk about newspapers dying a terrible death at the hands of the Internet. See Here!

I believe that people are getting too caught up the the word newspaper. Yes, it is used to describe a group of words, pictures and graphics that are physically printed on a sheet of paper. This was how phrase "newspaper" was coined. That word describes the product or the delivery method of the company at hand but not the company itself. We don't call Coca-Cola "cans full of soda" or "bottles of brown liquid." But this is how they deliver their product to me, so why not?

All I am saying is that you cannot say that newspaper companies are dying. Sure there may be less physically printed products in the future, but the ideas that found newspaper companies will never be extinct. This is because people will need to have information to enrich their lives. How this gets delivered to them will change with the times. In the old days information was passed by the telling of stories and the singing of songs and news was spread by word of mouth. Then came along hieroglyphics, the written word, smoke signals, telegraph, telephone, television and finally the Internet.

I tell my employees that our job is to give information to our readers and to bring buyers and sellers together. We currently happen to do this most effectively through the printed product. I believe this method of delivery will change in the future and is already changing right now. But our job as a newspaper company will not change. And that need for information by the human race will not either.

-t