For Mel

She's been telling me to post about this, so here it is....

This is the wooden valance that I made for our bedroom. It's made out of Hickory to match our bed. I used floor scraps from work, and finished it with one coat of oil based sanding sealing and three coats of water based polyurethane.

I built it to match the design of our head and foot boards.

Tables

I've finally finished the new tables for our living room. I made a coffee table, two end tables, and a side table. They are made in Mission or "Shaker" style, and made of rustic Alder. I purchased plans for these tables before we moved into our house, and have finally got them done. I altered the plans a little to make them suit my needs and looks.


For a first project I think they turned out pretty nice. I had some help from Todd. He let me in the shop and helped with cutting and sizing the wood and with assembly. Thanks Todd!

The next project will be the fireplace. I've figured out a new mantle and I think we've decided on which wall treatment and hearth design we want to go with. Stay tuned!

Nick will be getting our other end tables and old leather recliner for his new house! Way to go Nick on the new house! Can't wait too see it!

Quick uptdate

As you know, Mel and I went to Lake Bemidji State Park and did some camping with our friends. The new Tahoe did awesome on the trip, except for the A/C going out, again. Oh well.

It was pretty much back to work as usual, until Thursday. Glad this did NOT happen to me. One of my buddy's at work was cutting on the table saw and cut off the tips of two of his fingers on his left hand. His middle finger and ring finger, are now about 1/2 of an inch shorter. I talked to him on Friday and he said that he was at the hospital for 6 hours. He seemed to be in good spirits, but was mad at himself for doing something like this. He said that it wasn't an issue of using the saw wrong, it was just a freak accident.

As Mel said she went to the Wizard of OZ play in Eagan, on Wednesday and again on Friday. I ended up going with her on Friday, and to my surprise the play was excellent! There were a lot of scene changes that kind of made it long, but the sets were very well built. They also had a lot of people flying through the air, which I though was cool. Flying monkeys, the wicked witch, Dorothy in the tornado....

Well, that's about all I know for now.

Until next time...

New Ride!

Here is the real reason that I needed to fit the Jeep in the garage. I picked it up last night and have been cleaning it since. I haven't washed the outside since it's going to rain, but the inside needed some serious attention.

It's a 1997 Chevy Tahoe LT. Leather, power seats, power windows, power locks, AM/FM/Cassette/CD, running boards, 40/60 split rear bench seat, tailgate instead of doors, etc....

The Jeep is no longer my daily driver. I know what your thinking. How's the mileage on that thing? Well, believe it or not, it's better than the Jeep. It gets about 17mpg and the Jeep was getting 12 to 15mpg. We'll also be able to keep some miles off of Mel's Jeep. We were piling them on pretty good over the winter with my Jeep not having any heat. So this will be our main auto for road trips, and just running around on the weekends. We're heading to Al's cabin with it this weekend and then to Bemidji with it next weekend. I might even see how it does towing my Jeep, for our next off roading adventure.

Garages! Part Deux

Yes, that's correct. My Jeep is parked in my garage. No hell did not freeze over, and the Vikings won't win the super bowl this year, but my garage is.....I don't want to say "clean".....how about uncluttered enough, that I can fit the Jeep in there.

For the last month we've had the garage full of crap from a garage sale that we had in the beginning of June. We finally got sick of looking at it all so we loaded up the Liberty and dumped it off at the Goodwill. After lunch I did a bit of reorganizing, and WHAMMY!

There is still a lot of crap that I need to find a home for. I know that James wants the light box, and I've still got the tables in there. They'll be going back to my parents house. There's a few other random things, golf clubs, random pile of wood flooring, folding chairs. Speaking of golf clubs. If anyone wants them, let me know. There's one crappy driver, a decent 3 wood, and some decent irons. There to short for me, so they gotta go.

I'd eventually like to install one of those drop down ladders in the celling, so that I can store some stuff up there. That will help a lot.

Look for the real reason the Jeep is in the garage, in the next update. Coming soon!

Good Question

I was reading my favorite Jeeping forum, and someone had asked the question. "What do you want to do before you die?"

That's a damn good question. I really don't know. There are a few things that I want to do, that I can think of off the top of my head. There are certainly things that I've already accomplished.

Lets list some of them...

Already accomplished.

Got married.
Own a house.
Gone cliff jumping.
Traveled to London, and across the International Date Line.
Gone flying in a single engine plane.
Been to Canada.


Things I'd like to do.

Visit all of our country's National Parks.
Visit all of MN's State Parks.
Visit Hawaii.
Off road on the Rubicon Trail.
Own a custom furniture shop.
Learn how to Fly Fish.

Just to name a few...

I know that there are more things that I want to do in my life but when you sit down and think about it, that's kind of a hard question to answer. I'm sure that most people don't aspire to sit in a cubicle their whole lives. I know I sure didn't. I also don't want to be installing hardwood floors my whole life. I want to get out there and achieve. Learn new things. Share knowledge. Learn from kids. Make mistakes. Take pictures. Smell the flowers. Watch thunderstorms, and meteor showers. Get up early, and stay up late. Work like I don't need the money. Love like I've never been hurt.

I sure don't have any idea what I want to be when I grow up, but I do know that I've got a few things to do to keep me busy along the way.

Friday at work...

Work doesn't get any better, than it did on Friday. I got to install floors at the Minnesota Zoo.

They are redoing the whole Minnesota Trail, at the zoo, and they hired us to install some floors in one of the sections. They are making the whole thing look like a north woods cabin. We installed 5" Hand scraped Hickory. It was glued down the the concrete that was there before. They're really making that section look nice. I asked them when it was set to open, and they said that next week they start special group tours of the exhibit, then the press comes through, and it will be open to the public on July 7Th.

Here's some pics...

I wasn't able to get any pictures of it complete, cause we covered the floor right away. That's to keep it clean and free of scratches, while they are still working on the exhibit, since it's a pre-finished product. I guess you'll just have to go see for yourself.