The Final Countdown

With just one weekend left plus a Monday and Tuesday night before the arrival of The Elder, we put as much effort as possible into starting the shelves. We had the carpet installation scheduled for Monday morning, and we wanted at least the big shelves to be in before the carpet.

Troy has a jointer and a thickness planer, luckily. Unluckily, the pieces of wood we were using to make the two long shelves were way bigger and longer than anything we had used before and it sure took a learning curve to figure out how the two of us could work together to get the wood planed and jointed smoothly. It didn't always work, but I do feel proud of us. For one thing, we really are able to work together quite happily. And we definitely improved our skills. Eventually.

Getting these shelves in was quite the process. Isn't the wood lovely, though? Hard maple. I have decided I love going to MacBeath hardwood. 

I have no photos of us jointing (joining?) or planing the wood. We were too busy and had our hands too full. And man did that make a mess of shavings. But once the wood was nice and planed and joined...jointed.... it was time for the table saw:

 

Then Wall-E helped us chop it to length:

Something we find kind of hilarious is the fact that we (Troy) spent a LOT of time getting the wood perfectly square, perfectly flat and smooth. Then we would fit the wood into place, and it wouldn't be flush with the wall at all because the wall definitely wasn't flat or square. All the joint compound makes mounds in the wall. So after all that work, Troy would mark the spots where the wall was bulged out a bit, take the shelf outside, and remove a ton of wood in those spots. He tried the palm sander and even had the pleasure of using one of his hand planes. But they were just too slow. So we got a belt sander. Most fine woodworking doesn't make much use of a belt sander, especially one with 36 grit sandpaper. But we aren't most fine woodworkers! That belt sander removed the wood in hurry. 

 

Next came making marks for the brackets. We were slightly tempted to not rout out the wood for the brackets because we already thought the shelf looked so handsome. But routing out the slots looks so much better. Then came rubbing the shelves with a diaper. I mean, a cloth. Dipped in Danish oil/wax stuff. And if I was complaining about using medium gloss paint, it's a good thing I wasn't in charge of the oil/wax stuff, because it was even stickier.

 

So pretty, right????

Monday morning, just two days before Chase got home, we had the carpet installed. I was home - I took the week off of work so I could be crazy and do a bunch of cleaning. Like, I scrubbed the baseboards around the whole house and rearranged the top of the refrigerator and bought a new silverware drawer organizer. It was like I was 8 1/2 months pregnant and nesting before the arrival of a baby. 

Getting the carpet in was nothing short of miraculous. I have no words for the joy.

 

Then the shelves went in, with their spectacular feature: LED strip lights around the edges, making the most lovely, soft glow up on the ceiling. Troy has SUCH good ideas. I always think I understand how cool they're going to be but then when I see the finished product I realize I totally underestimated what Troy was visualizing. He's so talented. 

On Tuesday night we began to assemble the bed. Truthfully, I was a little bummed to be putting the bed in there. I knew it was going to just take up so much space and make the room feel so much smaller. But it had to be done! The idea is that at some point in the future when Troy is ready, we will build a bed, complete with drawers underneath it so there will be no need for a dresser. But now is not the time for that. In the meantime, we thought we'd get a somewhat crappy bed off of Amazon to fill the need. We got one with six drawers underneath it, and it arrived in two massively heavy packages a few days prior. 

We turned on Remember the Titans and got to work assembling the bed. We were not expecting a great quality product. I think you have to pay a LOT of money for great quality furniture. But not only was this bed not great, it was beyond dismal. Truthfully, we weren't positive that the bed would hold the weight of a mattress plus our son. One extra pillow might just make the whole thing collapse. And the drawers underneath? So. Awful. For one thing, they weren't even the whole width of the bed. They would barely fit baby clothes. And also there was the fact that they were made of a mix of sawdust and glue that just broke when we tried to get the things installed. Very discouraging. 

Here's the view of the pile of garbage waiting to go to the dump the next day:

Yeah, those are the drawers. We just gave up. We set up the bed, and cute Romney and Emma went to Walmart on Wednesday morning to get plastic drawers for under the bed while I set up the mattress and bedding.

Yeah that room got smaller. But here's the good news. The bed frame does work, and we are looking forward to designing and building a much nicer bed frame at some point in the not-too-distant future. And the best news of all? We had a room for our son to come home to. Not totally complete, but nice, clean, and welcoming.

And then, what on earth? It was time to go to the airport.

We Interrupt this Construction Project to Bring You....

 ....Anna's Quilt!

Yeah, I know. This wasn't a great time to be working on a quilt. There were certainly other things needing my time and attention. I fit in the quilting on Sunday afternoons and sometimes on weekday evenings while I was listening to online lectures. I have really enjoyed making this quilt, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

I think Anna is pleased too! She's so cute. She brought me a big reusable tumbler mug from the soda shop where she works - Thirst - as a thank you. It just makes me happy that there are teens out there who feel loved by me and safe with me. And now one is wrapped in a cozy quilt I made!

I had to add this photo - doesn't really have a place to go and it makes me smile to look at it. 

Welcome, Wall-E

Next step was the trim: the casings and molding around the window and closet door, and the baseboards. I seem to recall a rather late-evening trip to The Depot to pick out the wood for this and sort of feeling too tired to make good choices. Luckily Troy kept us on track and we ended up with pieces I really like.

Not all went so smoothly, however. Troy has a chop saw that got about the same time we also got a child. So...it's been around a long old time. When he went to make the first 45 degree cut for the molding around the door, it became extremely clear that we had a problem. It wasn't cutting in line with the laser, and we couldn't figure out how to fix that. We realized that we had two choices. One was to just do our best with each and every angle cut, slicing off more and more to get each piece right, or we could go shopping.

Now, Troy has been considering getting a nice sliding compound miter saw. But he hadn't exactly picked it out yet, and he does not like to be rushed. I told him that I was sorry that he was being pushing into making a large tool purchase under duress. That's not the way he is. But we both agreed that fighting with the old chop saw over every single angle was going to be an absolute nightmare. Another later-evening trip to The Depot and we came home with our newest friend. 

Meet Wall-E.

It only took a couple of silky-smooth cuts for us to both feel very very happy that Wall-E had joined our family. That lovely Dewalt made life so much better as we were putting up all the trim. We are very blessed with tools.

My main job was to be the painter. I know it's usual to use a flat paint for ceilings, and an eggshell or satin for walls, then a glossy paint on the trim. I hereby declare that using glossy paint is the absolute worst. It's so sticky! I did not especially enjoy the painting process. Like painting with half-dried glue.

 

Here is Troy putting another new tool to excellent use - a pneumatic finish nailer. We love it. 

 

 

The room looked pretty great with all of its trim in place! 

One thing we decided to be picky about was the closet doors. Sorry to be snobby, but we just did not want hollow-core doors. We wanted something nice and solid. Troy picked out these solid doors months ago, and they have been patiently waiting their turn on the back porch ever since. What a treat to finally put them in. Troy knew what kind of hardware he wanted for these heavy doors - he picked out some heavy-duty smooth-as-butter things made for 200lb doors. Worth it. 

  

 

In the words of a certain Star Wars pilot named Porkins....Almost There! Stay on target!