A Gift Just Because

Janna has been sick for the past week and I've had to be the lone ranger taking care of her, the house the kiddo and keeping our business going. In the interest of keeping myself healthy and not catching the same thing she has, I've been voluntarily sleeping on the couch all week. So, since she hasn't been expecting me to come to bed, I've been using my time late at night, from about 11pm to 1am, to accomplish some personal projects that I've been waiting to have time for. 

I've finally put together the basics of a work shop in our basement with a work bench and shelves and hooks for my tools, so I decided to put them to good use and do something to cheer up my wife who's been so miserably sick. 

Like most women, she loves to receive gifts "just because." It makes her feel loved and know that I'm thinking about her. She also has a habit of asking for reasons why when I tell her that I love her. "Tell me why" she'll say with a warm smile and a twinkle in her eye and I'll stumble my way through saying something sweet since I'm not very good at expressing my emotions. But with that in mind, I wanted to do something that would feed her desire for loving words and her appreciation for thoughtful gifts and get to exercise some of my own creativity with wood at the same time. 

I have big pile of scrap wood that I burn in our fireplace, but every now and then, I find a good a use for some of the cool looking old cracked and weathered pieces other than just watching them burn. I chose a few chunks from the pile, put them in a box and brought it into our basement and left it there  next to the furnace for a couple days to dry since it had been out in the snowy weather.

I also remembered that I have a few old windows that I had collected for fun projects. I chose one and removed a pane of glass from it. 

I also happened to have roll of burlap sitting in a closet, leftover from a previous project some time ago... hmmm, ideas, ideas... 

The wheels in my head turned and I decided to make a decorative wall piece that I could write her love notes on with a dry erase marker.  I chose a cool looking piece of wood for a backing and laid a piece of burlap over it. The burlap would make for a nice rustic, yet warm/soft look combined with the wood. The piece of glass I took from the window would be the writing surface.

I took some wood pieces from an empty crate of oranges which was pretty close to the same thickness as the glass to serve as a backing for the trim that I would place around the glass. I stapled these spacer pieces over the burlap onto the main backing creating a perfect fit for the glass.

At this point I remembered that I had some black chain leftover from another previous project and I decided to use that to hang the finished project.

I didn't have any wood glue on hand so I applied contact cement onto the wood spacers and the trim pieces and clamped them in place. Also, as you can see here below, I printed out the phrase "I love you because..." on a sheet of translucent vellum paper and then tore it out and placed it and a flower blossom under the glass.

I let the glue set up over night and then attached the chain and the project was done. Ready to be gift wrapped and delivered to my unsuspecting wife along with breakfast in bed.

After almost 6 years of marriage, for the very first time, I succeeded in actually surprising her. She had one of those clutch your chest and say "awww" moments and I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Then I told her, since she's been sick all week and we didn't really get to have any quality time together, I wanted to do something that would fulfill all of the other love languages. (You know, the 5 love languages? Google it if you don't know...) I said that all in one fell swoop I gave her a gift, an act of service and words of affirmation which will lead to quality time and physical touch. 

Boo yah! :P

I have some more plans for wood projects coming up, stay tuned if you're enjoying these little wood working blogging stories. :)

Now here's Isaac and mommy having a cute moment together...  

Rustic Desk Project

A couple months ago I started a project of building a new desk for our office out of reclaimed wood from old shipping crates that I took apart. My dad got a big stack of crates from his work where they get lots of equipment shipments on one-time use crates. 

This is what the crates looked like:

Here's a few images of the construction process. 

I took apart the crates and selected the best pieces of wood that didn't have huge splits or chunks missing. 

It's a corner desk and it needed to be built in two sections to fit it up the stairs into the office. I didn't want just a normal 45 degree angle cut corner joint because I wanted a more rustic look so I went with a staggered joint and the two sides of the desk slide together in place in the corner. 

I put all the boards through a table saw to have nice clean straight edges for tight joints and then glued and screwed the boards onto sheets of OSB chip board. 

Sanding the sides of the joints was crucial for a smooth sliding fit in the corner.

After the assembly was finished I sanded the whole surface smooth.

I also had some extra help with the sanding process. :)

I stained the desk with a custom mix of stains. I wanted to keep the weathered look but I didn't want the grey to clash against the other brown woods in the office. I chose Minwax Special Walnut which is a dark brown I used on lots of other projects and then mixed it with light gray Weathered Oak stain. After wiping the mixed stain over the surface, while it was still wet, I then wiped another coat of the Weathered Oak over that. The result was a gorgeous grayish brown color. I call it Smokey Walnut. I finished it with a few coats of clear satin Minwax Wipe-On Poly varnish.

The desk attaches to the wall on ledgers on three sides so I knew I would only need one leg on one corner for added support. I had originally planned on using more of the same crate wood for a leg, but then when it came time to build the leg I changed my mind in favor of an even more custom and rustic look. I hauled a nice piece of maple out of the woods behind our house. And again, my original plan was to cut the two forks to fit under the desk, but my awesome wife had the idea to cut one fork to fit under the front corner and notch the back fork and fit the desk into the side of the log. 

...She's a genius!

After stripping the bark off the log, I used a sand blaster to get rid of most of the soft wet mushy stuff and then did the finish sanding with a hand power sander. 

However, while simple in theory, it proved to be pretty tricky to actually make it work. Cutting a notch like this is difficult enough by itself without special types of saws and equipment which I don't have. To make the task more difficult, trying to do it on a log that doesn't have a single straight edge to line up a saw is almost impossible without a radial arm saw. Rather then risking messing it up by using a circular saw by hand, I decided to do it a little at a time with a hammer and chisel to make sure I didn't go too far with the cut. It took a whole day of chiseling a little bit at a time and carrying it up the stairs to the office to see what I needed to adjust in the notch, but the result was worth the effort and it was just fun to do it the old fashioned way. :)

I finished the log with the same varnish.

Here's an iPhone shot of the old desk.

And here's the finished new desk. The light in the photos doesn't show the grayish brown color as well as I had hoped, but I assure you, it's awesome. 

Please feel free to "Pin" these images on your Pinterest boards. 

If you're interested in a custom wood project, please drop a comment on this post or shoot me an email to bradley(dot)lanphear(at)gmail(dot)com

Cheers!