I’m hoping to finish the screen door today. This morning I’ve been planing it to size. Maybe I’m sorta kinda almost maybe figuring out how to use planes? Also smoking pork spare ribs on the grill for the first time. And listening to a red-shouldered hawk make its way around the neighborhood.
No one is more surprised than me that the screen door I’m building is square and the half-lap joints are mostly okay. Tomorrow I’ll put dowels in the joints.
Rex Krueger says “don’t measure”—and I’m trying to live by that as I build a new screen door for our back porch. I was recently burned by over-reliance on a tape measure when building a garage shelf.
I have a very special sweetgum tree in my yard. I’ll tell you the story sometime. But it does require a lot of raking: we fill a few of these barrels with their spiky seed pods every year.
After our mishap last weekend, we got the new part in today and now we have a working stove.
Well, other projects have been put on hold since our screen door has gone from “let’s fix that this spring” to “it’s falling apart in our hands.” So I’m going to attempt (something like) Tommy Silva’s design.
I cleaned up a couple of pieces of that century-old trim I picked up from my in-law’s remodel last year:
Those will be the rails. I’ll have to buy some lumber for the stiles since I don’t already have anything long enough.
Also, I found this gate on the sidewalk beside a trash barrel. I’ll take it apart and find some use for it!
I’m disappointed that it’s too cold to be in my garage working on my weekend project but I’m going to console myself with a big breakfast for lunch and reading Wendell Berry this afternoon. I’ve nearly finished Nathan Coulter.
I have my weekend project: a router sled. Attempting to surface my low bench with a hand plane didn’t work for a few reasons and it beat the hell out of the blade because the bench is built from rough old lumber. This will allow me to keep moving on the project and make plane adjustments later.
Well it’s been about ten months since the last of these. I continued building things in 2023 but just didn’t keep track of them in this format: I built two new raised beds: here and here. A window box in April. I pulled a lot of nails in June. In July, I did a very rough-and-ready job of insulating about half the garage walls and covering them with plywood. Mostly to give more structure to the walls so I can put up shelves.
My first attempt at a Black Forest cake won’t win me a spot on the Great British Baking Show—but hopefully it tastes good at lunch tomorrow.
