I built Joseph a bunkbed for his 4th(!) birthday. I don’t have much for gratuitous making-of photos, but here are a few of the finished product. Let me know if you’re interested in more detailed pictures (up close, joints, connections, that kind of thing).
Thanks to this Ugmonk post where he talks about building his own monitor stand, I was inspired to build my own. I used my (free) wood of choice, pallets.
I spent an amazon gift card to get this sweet x-wing schematics poster.
I didn’t want to hide the cool matte chalk-board-like finish behind a Plexiglass poster frame, so I built a plywood poster frame instead. Pretty happy with it, except I had to cut a half inch from the top and bottom of the poster to account for my mis-measurement. I measured once & cut twice. 😳🙄
In late February, thanks to some nudging from my kids (and a slight case of Spring Fever), we decided it was high-time our backyard had a tree house. Our yard has a large number of tree-house-ready trees, so we actually struggled over which location would be best.
Another pallet venture. This is modified from some pictures we found on Pinterest. In those pictures, the ones that had coat hooks had them attached to the front piece of wood, but that won’t work for us since the door would open into them. Instead, we got some celing hooks to attach underneath, and a couple standard coat hooks to serve as decorative “key hooks”.
Continue reading Pallet shelf with coat and key hooksDeconstructed the pallets with a reciprocating saw, sanded the crap out of them (80 & 120 grit), then a couple coats of tung oil.
Here’s a recent project I took on. My wife has been begging me to do something with a dining room table for a while. I’ve been reluctant to paint the one we have because it has a laminate/formica top, and I wasn’t fond of the idea of the finish chipping off.. But after some research, I felt more comfortable with the idea. After sanding the crap out of it, I ended up using oil-based kilz as the bonding primer.
Continue reading DIY Dining Room Table refinish/paintingI decided to build a desk since the prices of nice desks are astronomical, and since I wanted it to be a custom fit for me. I knew I wanted more desk space, but didn’t want to necessarily build a giant desk, so I opted instead to build two side shelves that could serve as an extension to the desk. This is super convenient if I ever needed to use the desk in a smaller location or if I wanted to position the shelves differently.
Continue reading Operation Desk: DIY desk and shelves$50 for this? looks nice, but common!
How about making my own?
YES! i can do that…
So here it is. i’ll update this post when i get around to painting it.


*Update*
Ok, i got around to painting it… kinda gave it an aged look… to match the whole apple experience.
Ok, the last part was a joke.
*Update #2*
Ok, for the ultimate finish, thanks to a donation of two fans and a power adapter by @sr_tirado. Check it out!
For the last week, we have been renovating Vic & Cindy’s master bedroom in anticipation of Vic’s arrival here. He lost his job in MN, which is a bad thing, but is a good thing because he gets to move here to be with his family. We wanted to do this for them, because we appreciate them so much, and to give them a haven to get away from all the “young people.” Since they always take care of themselves last, we knew their room would never get done, unless we did it now. And it’s a good thing… the room started out bad, and was only getting worse with the addition of miscallaneous things that didn’t belong anywhere else. Here’s some “before” pictures.
the couch was a new addition to the room… you could say it’s what pushed us over the top…

After we started moving stuff…

room between bathroom and bedroom.

Ugg!
Ok… enough of that… now for the “After” stuff!
first, pictures:
Master Bedroom





Master Bath




And the video “reveal”