First work bench of the workshop!

I have now made the first workbench in my workshop. I decided to build it so the work surface is the same height as my jointer, so longer material that need to be jointed can just be slid right onto the work table. That is of course dependent on the table surface being clean of all the crap that already has accumulated there.

Greenhouse expansion

I decided that the old greenhouse in our backyard needed an extension, so it could start doing duty as a workshop for my various projects. I added on about 4 feet over the full width of about 9 feet of the old greenhouse. There are all kinds of weird things going on with my carpentry work on the new part, but it works for now. Here are some pictures of the new part, complete with some of the old mess inside.

I need to post more here

I have done lots of things to the house, and I have lots of plans. I think I need to post some of the stuff here so I can get some feedback and comments on my work and plans. Look for more to come soon.

Tankless water heater update

This is why we wanted to upgrade to a tankless water heater. Our gas usage is cut in half this summer compared to last year.

Tankless Water Heater!

I miraculously found a tankless water heater on Craigslist for $50. After much envy and furious anger, our old water heater decided it didn't like this acquisition, and started leaking, a lot. Good thing we have our water heater out on the deck at the back of our house, or the garage we don't have would have been seriously flooded. It took me a couple of 3-hour days of working and 4 (or was if 5?) trips to Pastime Hardware to get the tankless heater in, and lucky for me, it worked right away.

Our gas piping is grossly inadequate for the 165,000 btus the heater is able to produce, but at least it heats plenty warm enough for showers and everything else it's needed for at this moment.

Look, isn't it pretty?

Sandbox

I'll start with the small upgrades to the house, or should I say to structures vital to the fun of the kids. 4 years ago I built the sandbox, 6x6 feet of 2x12s, a top edge and a lid. Didn't use pressure treated wood and just plopped the thing right into the dirt. Now the bottom of the sides are in bad, bad shape. I replaced one of them with the proper pressure treated wood this weekend, and I should probably do the 3 remaining sides later this summer.

And I designed a new lid to keep Piper and the other neighborhood cats out of the box.

Picture to follow this afternoon. Time to learn how to take "before" pictures. The "after" pictures look much better then...

The almost start

We bought our house in December last year. When we finally became the owners of the house, I really started coming up with plans for how I would like to make it work better, and also make it bigger as well. I know people made it work before, but 871 square feet of 2/1 is just not going to be enough for 2 boys growing up and me and Angela and Piper.

So I decided to document all our changes and improvements here. We havelready started with a lot of small things, so as I go along I'll try to cover those as well. I also made a list of all my plans, and maybe I'll post that one tomorrow. So for now, just a small picture of the house.