I’ve been working on other projects, like my lathe, lately, but I’ve also been slowly building more bookcases. I think with this most recent batch, I’ve passed the halfway point in the construction.
It’s nice to be able to unpack more of my books, but it’s always a slow process, since almost every box of books contains at least one book that I want to peek inside before I put it on the shelves.
Ah well. As long as I keep making progress, my sweetie is okay with me dawdling a bit.
As for the progress pictures, this is likely to be the view for all of them in the future. My iPhone’s camera can just barely capture them all if I stand with my back against the opposite wall.
We’ve been busy painting the past couple weeks. Well, my sweetie has been. I’ve been moving ladders and drop cloths and stuff that doesn’t involve going up and down ladders.
She got a new coat of stain on all the wood trim on our house. I don’t think the previous owners ever did that, and the wood was in pretty rough shape.
The bench that sits in our portale also needed a refresh. I knocked it together in a couple hours for a Fourth of July picnic in 2017, then coated it with a couple coats of leftover house paint. But it has been used as a workbench and saw horse over the past year, and it was looking pretty rough, too.
I rounded off the corners of the bench, removing the worst of the damage. My sweetie sanded it lightly and put on three coats of some new enamel paint we bought (40% off at Sherwin-Williams, and still $25 for a quart). We both think it makes the entry to our house a lot more appealing.
One of my ongoing projects is building bookcases to hold all my books. I’ve now built 3 XL cases, 12 large cases, and 5 medium cases. I’ve got another dozen medium and a “whole bunch” of small cases to build yet, but it’s nice getting books unpacked and organized.
I expect I’ve got another month or two of building cases remaining, plus at least one more trip to town for lumber, but over half of the boxes are unpacked, and it feels good to know that the end is in sight.
Once the bookcases are done, I’ve got more shop furniture to build. I have a brace till (for holding bit braces) which needs seven drawers built to hold the various drill bits I have. I want to make a 50-drawer hardware cabinet, and have some wormy chestnut arriving this week for the drawer fronts for that. Plus I need another bench to hold the forge and associated equipment.
Today’s project was getting rocks around the culvert that runs under our driveway. It was also full of gravel and weeds and at least one nest for one of the neighborhood rodents.
Alfredo cleaned it out and built the nice rock walls to keep the dirt from washing into the culvert again, finishing off the rock projects for this year.
Feels good to have that crossed off the todo list.
By the time we finished with the planting last night, the sun had set, so it was too dark for a progress photo. I took the photo above before we started working again this morning.
This second photo is when we’re done for the morning. We’ve got one more sand cherry to plant up next to the shop (the building in the near-middle background of these photos), but that’ll be tomorrow morning. Digging holes in the clay soil here is hard work.
Another day, more rocks moved about. We also planted five Russian Sage plants by our front gate.
Then after getting them planted, I spent an hour chatting with our neighbor, Greg. He says he’s kind of envious of how much we’ve improved the look of the place in the year since we moved in, which is nice to hear.
When we moved to #NewMexico, one of our new neighbors told us that the official state hobby was rearranging rocks.
Well, I guess we’re officially New Mexicans now. Heading to town in the morning for a second two pallets of rock, another two yards of topsoil, and a bunch of plants. But I think the place is looking a lot better with the work we’re having done.
No errands today. Spent a good amount of time in the shop, building bookcases.
Here’s one case, freshly assembled and glued together. It’ll dry overnight.
And here are the two cases that are farther along. The one on the right has been planed smooth and received a coat of shellac. That’ll dry overnight (it’s already dry, but this has proven to be a good pausing point for me).
The one on the left has had its first coats of shellac lightly sanded, and has received its second set of shellac. It’ll come inside after it has dried overnight (it’s already dry, but the shellac will be a little tougher tomorrow).
The step in the building you don’t see is all the wood pieces dovetailed and rabbeted for the assembly. If everything is going perfectly, that also happens in a day in the shop. Today I was catching up on some dovetailing from yesterday, and I’m running a little behind. I may head out after dinner and cut a set of boards so I can glue up a case first thing tomorrow. We’ll see.
I’ve been building bookcases to hold my books. I have seven of them done, and another 40 or so to build (I’ve been doing the largest sizes first). It’s a big project, but each new box that’s built is a step closer to being done, and it’ll be a nice feeling to be able to say, “Yeah, I built those.”
Edited to add: here they are with more books unpacked. I’m going to have a lot of sorting to do.
