I’m down in Portland, OR for a week. I’m attending 2 woodworking classes (see my woodwoorking blog, This Week in Wood for more details).
Before I left, Kathy and I had a tentative plan that the family would come down for the weekend. We’ve never really come to Portland before and we figured it was a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Hobbies’
Wondering if my family is coming to Portland for weekend
Shop Layout
One of the things I’ve found that I spend a lot of time as a woodworker (hobby not professional) is organizing my shop. I’ve read that many hobby based woodworkers do the same.
I suspect that my reasons for this is multi faceted. One reason is that my shop is relatively small. Another [...]
Guitar Practice
So for the past three years, I have been actively working to learn how to play the guitar. My view on what this means has changed over these three years.
When I first started, I wanted to learn to play chords so I could play campfire songs. My first year or so [...]
Paint Changes
I painted the kitchen walls yesterday with our choice of yellow. It’s a friendly, inviting yellow that has mustard tones in it – not Dijon and not French’s yellow though.
Once it was on the wall, Kathy began the process of changing her mind. She liked the Kitchen color but wanted to change the [...]
Time to Paint
The kitchen remodel that we are doing is going well – in fact, we may be ahead of schedule by a day or so.
I’ve started to do some of the painting.
Kathy and I have taken more risk than we’ve done before with color though it’s still pretty conservative. We are going with a yellow [...]
Remodel Anxiety
Ok, when you go into a remodel of your house, your home, you are hopeful that the choices you make are the right ones. You are hopeful, that the design fits your personal style. You are hopeful, that the functionality is maximized. Ultimately, you are hopeful that the results will be everything [...]
Remodel Info
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this at all or very often in this blog but Kathy and I are doing a large remodel of our kitchen, dining room, and laundry/mud room.
So far, I must say that the company we hired to do this job has some really hard working folks. I think they [...]
Small Project
Kathy and I like having a white board and a place to hang things (via magnets or such). We came up with a space in our Laundry Room/Mud Room to hang it so that defined the size.
I’ve taken a quick and dirty way of making something for the space by combining two inexpensive boards. [...]
New Workbench
Recently, Matt from Matt’s Basement Workshop podcast (go find it on iTunes) had talked about replacing his workbench. It motivated me to try the same.
I had a workbench that was collapsable which was a benefit since my shop is small. After looking at it and considering the actual workspace on the bench, I [...]
Paint Color
Kathy totally disagrees with me on this but I believe that I have a decent color sense. Mind you, I can be lazy with regards to pick clothing but that doesn’t mean I don’t know things don’t work. Also, I can’t give you the accurate color name but again it doesn’t mean that [...]
Wordpress on iPod Touch
I am trying the new Wordpress application for the iPod Touch/iPhone. It as simple to set up. The keyboard makes it hard enough that I am not likely to post very often.
Vista and Fusion
I’ve just setup up a new virtual machine under VMWare’s Fusion. Since Kathy has been having good luck with Vista, I decided to take the plunge too and used Vista SP1 for this new virtual machine.
My purpose for this installation is to run a few simple programs that I have yet to shed myself [...]
Blanket Chest – Progress finally!
I’ve been very busy over the last 2 weeks or so on my blanket chest. It is assembled and sanded and ready for a finish.
Here is a picture on the way to getting done:
Here is the final assembled (still needs knobs on the drawers though):
I have already installed the knobs and drawer sliders. [...]
Guitar Repair Maintenance
I bought a DVD talking about Electric Guitar setup and maintenance. The DVD is titled Fret MD: Electric Guitar and Bass Setup and Maintenance with Al Markasky.
Short of a class on this subject, I thought the presentation of the areas covered were excellent. He covers the main areas of setup which in his [...]
Woodworking: Blanket Chest
I’ve been working pretty steady on my blanket chest and making some progress forward and then losing some progress too.
At the beginning of the project, I had taken a bunch of Cherry wood (what I’m making this blanket chest from) and glued up panels. The glue ups looked great after some scraping and sanding. [...]