How not to build a shelf

This is one of 3 shelf's that the previous owners left behind. This is also an example of how NOT to build a shelf. I do not have a picture of one of them as it is not replaced by my 12' shelf. The other is fairly decent long shelf hidden right now by old dressers and such.

The shelf pictured here no longer exists either. It has been replaced by my first work bench.

Side project

My Grandfather passed away a few years ago. He lived in a house that he purchased 70+ years ago. During that time he acquired several pieces of older furniture.

My parents acquired the house and property from the estate after he passed on. Left in the house were several of the old dressers and such. I loaded those up on the back of a pickup truck and brought them down to my place. My goal is to refinish these pieces. Some are a really nice wood but have been painted over or have really old cruddy stain/varnish coatings on them.

Here are some of the pictures of these pieces.

First Project

After my wife and I got married she moved into my place. I already had an established household furniture and all. As my wife had moved from the East Coast to be out here all her stuff was still in storage, It sat in storage for over a year.

Now that we moved all her stuff came out of storage and was moved into the house. This created a problem of too much stuff in the house. We have been slowly working on sorting through the stuff but there is a lot of stuff to go through.

A solution I came up with was we needed more storage space. SO, in my new fancy garage I build a large shelf almost 12' long. Here are some of the pictures of this project.

Blog update and redirection

It has been a while. I have a few quick updates.

• I ended up not getting married on December 31st. We moved it up to the Saturday before and were married on December 27th.
• We recently made the plunge into home ownership with a all the low rates and being a buyers market. We purchased a 40 year old rambler that needs some loving care, not quite to the point were it needs TLC.
• Our new house has a detached garage / shop. This is not a typical garage, it is a steel building designed to house a large RV, big enough to house two in fact.
• This garage has become my work shop for doing wood working.

That being said I will be turning the focus of this blog to talking about my woodworking projects. This will not be a daily blog as woodworking is only a hobby and I have a limited budget for tools, wood, and supplies. I do have some lofty goals for my woodworking such as side boards, beds, dressers ect. To start off I will only be working on skill building projects such as small boxes and shop tools and jigs.

Prep Time

Today my fiancee came up to my place and we made apple crisp and an apple crumb pie for our Thanksgiving party up at my brothers place.

We are now 75% sure we want to get married on December 31st. The next hurtle is, where will it happen. Mary wants to have it at the top of a mountain. Well we are not at a shortage of mountains around here. I have a natural skeptical streak in me. An issue i see is the mountains by me all require a Snow-park parking permit just to park there for a little while. These cost about $10 per day per car. I do not really feel comfortable with asking the attendees to pay that, and I am not really sure we can afford it. This is Washington, there is NO WAY to guarantee what the weather will be like. So the question still remains, where to have it.

My brother suggested to use a mountain up by his place, he also has one of those self standing 10'x10' tent thing.. they type you see at the street fairs.

This Friday we will take a look at this place. Looking at the place on a map it may work out well.... it has a road to the top. :D

Work Hours

Every couple of months my team at work goes through a change in schedules. Well we just went through another one and my shift got changed for the worse. My new schedule is now Sat - Mon
7:00pm - 9:00am. I don't mind so much the option of working three days a week. But when I am already struggling to make it to a 9am church time on a day I don't even work, getting off at the same time our main meeting starts is going to be really tough. As people keep telling me the bright side of this is that in January my church schedule will switch to 1pm. My problem with that is it will not be right in the middle of when I should be asleep so as not to be a zombie at work.

I was also upset that I was going to have a possible conflict with taking my fiancee to our group holiday party. The party was scheduled for Saturday the 13th of December. The Week after I start my new Saturday night schedule. Well I felt a little vindicated this past week when our CVP for our group announced that the party was canceled for this year... Well if I can't go... I guess no one can go... I know it is sorta lame to think that way...

Update

Well I no longer have a Girlfriend.

She is now my Fiancee. We are looking to be married this holiday season when my kids are in town. My profile shows a picture of us sitting at a park in July. We here officialy engaged a few days after this picture was taken.