Author: jared

Making an Outdoor Side Table from Scrap Wood

Posted on June 3, 2019 by jared - Woodworking

Solving a need with stuff we didn’t need!

The previous owner of our house left a fair amount of wood scraps in the garage. The really good stuff I cut up for various projects and the bad stuff I burned as part of our summer and fall fire pit evening extravaganzas.[1]

That left the mediocre stuff. The stuff you look at and think, “I’ll definitely use it eventually, but not today- and certainly not on this project.”[2]

I mean, the distressed, rustic wood look on a farmhouse-style kitchen table is cool but not if the wood looks like it came from a haunted house!

My aversion to using mediocre wood scraps resulted in me doing two things I typically detest:

Spending money on things I don’t technically need. With the exception of a few planks of premium pine given by a friend, all of my projects last year used wood purchased from a store.
Holding on to things that don’t have a clear use. It’s part of what I call “The Hobbyist’s Curse” and the clutter drives me crazy.

So with the days growing short and my scrap pile increasing, I set out to reverse these bad habits and use up before I paid up.

I decided to call this project “The Ultimate Scrap Challenge” after actually looking closely at the scrap wood I had; it would be a lot more difficult to make something than I had expected![3]

I had a few 2x4s that had seen better days, some oddly cut plywood and 4x4s, some very small leftovers from my dresser, shelf and various desk projects, and some seasoned logs that were intended for the fireplace.

I mulled things over for a few days. I thought of building a birdhouse, a bird bath, an art project[4], or just throwing in the towel and throwing the scrap in the fire.

But one evening, sitting in a hard plastic Adirondack style chair by the firepit, I realized I had nowhere to place my craft root beer and fire-licked hot dog. And thus, The Muses sang.

Ultimate Scrap Challenge #1 would be an outdoor side table.

I grabbed the nicest 2×4 pieces and sized them up. I didn’t have enough 2x4s or 4x4s for legs, and decided that logs for legs would be sweet.

*There’s a 95% chance I was muttering darkly to myself during this picture*

I did some dry fitting and some placing in my head. You can see the evolution of the design in my planner:

*It started out pretty well, and ended up…well…*

With a final design in mind, I went to the wood shop and chiseled off as much bark from the logs as I could. I then sanded the logs and the 2x4s with an orbital sander. The logs ended up looking kind of marbleized which I did not expect:

*I guess whatever pest had started eating them was an artist too!*

After cutting the 2x4s to size I used pocket hole screws and wood glue on the 2x4s to make the top:

I decided to sand it down a little to provide a smoother table surface as well as to prevent splinters:

Unfortunately, when I went to dry fit the legs I realized that one leg wasn’t going to work: with the bark on it had looked fine, but while taking the bark off I found a large section had gone soft and the log was too bent and misshapen to balance well.

After getting ideas from wood shop folks[5] I decided to cut the offending log in half and attach the pieces onto the side of the table for a “log wrap around” look. After cutting the semi-rotted log on the bandsaw I used an electric hand planer to trim it down so it lined it up with the table top:

I then used nails to attach the remaining three legs in a tripod fashion and boom, we had a table!

*It even balances on three legs. Science!*

The extra space from the side logs was a welcome bonus; admittedly, the original top lacked adequate space but that was fixed once the log ends were attached.

To finish the patio table I doused the whole thing (legs and all) with several coats of tung oil. It gave the wood a nice uniform color that tied the patio table together:

Eight months after finishing the table it’s still looking great, so I declare this Ultimate Scrap Challenge a success.

A closing note on care taking: I leave it out during the rain, but during winter I brought the table into the garage since we aren’t on the patio very often in winter. I also plan to re-apply tung oil each year to keep it looking great.

[1] No really, they’re THAT amazing.

[2] Admit it, you do this too.

[3] This name is probably already taken by some group or another, but I hadn’t heard of it and thought it sounded just over the top enough to be fun and serious.

[4] I am NOT artistic. So this would have been a real stretch for me.

[5] Some solicited, some not.

Epic Patio Furniture Restoration

Posted on May 24, 2019 by jared - Restoring

This project put me in physical therapy for weeks, but was completely worth it.

Part of my frugality quirk includes looking for stuff that I would totally buy, but am willing to wait a long time to get for free.[1]

I’ve previously posted about an outdoor patio side table I designed and built from leftover wood as an “ultimate scrap challenge.”[2]

And add to that, the former owner of the house next door gave us two Adirondack-style hard plastic chairs before she moved out:

The small blue table was part of the free set I got from Craigslist in this post, but since we didn’t need it (or the Adirondack chairs) I gave them all away as a set of their own…on Craigslist. It’s the circle of life!

Not too bad for free patio furniture. However, we were about to up-level our patio furniture game by 1,000.

As I often do, I pulled up Craigslist and browsed the free listings. One called “Free outdoor furniture” caught my eye. It was a sweet, stylish teak patio furniture set. Even though it was old and had mold, I was excited about restoring it to its full glory!

In the pictures the furniture didn’t look very good, and I mentally confirmed I’d purchased a new, working nozzle for our power washer before asking if it was still available. The next day and one quick trip later, the teak patio set was ours.

Here is what the patio set looked like after making it back to our place:[3]

*Cushions and pillows were included. In the back you can see the outdoor side table I made from scrap wood the previous fall*

Yikes. Some breaks and rot but overall not impossible to fix…but I knew it would take a lot of work.

First came power washing:

Oh yeah! That’s the stuff.

Bonus point to me for thinking to move the furniture onto the grass for some free watering.

All done with power washing the wood:

And here is the set back on the patio for comparison:

I didn’t forget about the pillows! There was a LOT of dirt/algae(?) on them:

*Unfortunately the power washer setting was too strong in places and 2 cushions got holes. Word to the wise.*

Next I sanded the wood with a random orbital sander and 120 grit sandpaper:

After I was done sanding then my wife and I got some rubber gloves, lint-free rags, and teak oil and went to town on the freshly sanded patio set.

Two coats of teak oil later and this is the result:

And here you can see the difference between no teak oil vs one coat:

We were all amazed by the results; I will always remember my kids’ jaws dropping when they saw the finished product:

And from the other side:

I’ll include a note of caution: I definitely strained my lower back with all of the lifting, bending, and repetitive motions involved to power wash, sand, and stain them. So take that into account and don’t hurt yourself! It took me three separate, sequential afternoons to do all of this and my back is still sore several days later. Yeah, guess I’m old after all.[4]

[1] There are worse quirks..

[2] I highly recommend Ultimate Scrap Challenges. I doubt I started the practice but would love to see what you make!

[3] This all fit in our 1998 Honda CR-V. That car is magical and can fit anything.

[4] Update a few months later: the pain didn’t go away so I ended up in physical therapy :/

A Gentleman in Moscow [Book Review]

Posted on May 15, 2019 by jared - Book Reviews

*A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, photo credit to NPR*

Amor Towles’ novel A Gentleman in Moscow is a supremely enjoyable journey into the life of post-Great War Russia’s last gentleman.

The pages drip with life; its characters grow and breathe with startling familiarity as Towles wraps the reader in what often feels like Downtown Abbey on paper.

From the detailed description- and delightful surprises- of the Grand Duke’s desk and Count Rostov’s youthful nobility we’re simultaneously given a sense of grandeur and a sense of loss.

Readers admire the Count for his Stoic approach to unjust imprisonment. We anticipate the blossoming of friendships with Nina and Anna. We root for him in his war with The Bishop.

This book enjoyably exceeded my expectations. I felt there was something secret that I just HAD to be in on lurking just beneath the surface and I couldn’t wait to find it.

And Towles delivered.

Making a Mew Drain Cover

Posted on May 10, 2019 by jared - Piquant, Woodworking

A fun Easter egg for the next family who moves in 🙂

Our basement has a strange, almost exactly 12 inch x 12 inch hole in the cement floor that, as far as I can tell, is only there for air conditioner drainage. It was “covered” by a hard plastic grate with large slits.

A few months after moving in we noticed small gnat-like creatures appearing in our basement. Research pointed to the drain as their source, so I smothered the drain with Boric Acid powder and covered the opening with foil tape (it was left in the garage by the previous owners, was rigid enough to cover the space without collapsing, and I was lazy):

*Foil tape cover (after a few years) in all its ugly glory*

No more gnats!

A few years passed and all was well…until the beetles came. Like the gnats that preceded them, they starting showed up in the basement. Research again indicated their source was the drain.

Pulling up the foil tape I found several beetles stuck to the adhesive where they had tried to get out of the drain. Bingo.

I set out for a better drain; a drain that let a pipe in, but didn’t let bugs out. Several hardware stores and even the mighty Amazon.com let me down.

It was time to go rogue.

At first I thought of 3D printing my own drain cover. I designed the cover in AutoDesk Fusion 360 (which is amazing, mad respect) and included an entrance for the A/C drainage pipe. I even beveled (chamfered?) the edges to match the concrete opening for that 10/10 fit:

I decided it needed something…more. Something both unexpected and exciting. No sir, this would not be your Average Drain Cover. It needed an Easter Egg.[1]

After some debate and soulful Google Image searching I found the ultimate Easter Egg: the Mew carving from ‘Pokemon The First Movie‘ (1999):

I found a way to embed the carving into the surface of my 3D model and we were ready to go:

However, I tried and failed to find a 3D printer with a large enough print bed. I experimented with a slightly scaled down version (closer to 11 inches) on the largest printer at the local maker space, but had issues with bed adhesion so scrapped it.

I debated a re-design that would make an interlocking set of 4 pieces…but ultimately decided laser engraving wood would be easier.

I found a few leftover wood boards that fit the bill, fired up Photoshop, and got to work.

First I had to convert the Mew image into a bitmap. Going back to the source image I traced out Mew, removed a lot of the fuzzy details (for a cleaner engraving), and then added in some marks with the brush tool to improve the “old stone engraving” look:

My first laser engraving attempt was a huge fail. The laser cutter was an 80 watt beast and my settings were way too high, resulting in a brown mess:

*I’m also pretty sure I had the grain the wrong way*

I took a huge step back and looked at engraving tutorials. I ended up using this one for my remaining engraving attempts: https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Laser-Engraving-Photo/

Using the tutorial’s settings gave me a much better result, however it looked too washed-out for what I had in mind:

*Yes, I re-used the first piece of wood. I’m frugal.*

I tried again. Keeping in mind it was an 80 watt laser cutter I got another board and adjusted the settings to:

And it gave me this:

Comparing side by side:

*I test-fit the first one to make sure it would work, hence the hole in the side*

Once I had cut the engraved board to the right dimensions I lightly sanded with 220 grit sandpaper and gave it several coats of Minwax satin finish polyurethane. I normally don’t use spray poly, but did this time as I wanted to avoid missing crevices or it pooling unevenly.

To protect the bottom from moisture I found the original roll of foil tape[3] and applied it in overlapping strips, making sure to bring it up the sides as well:

The final step was to run weatherstripping foam around the edges for Extra Sealing Power(TM). Luckily I had leftover weatherstripping from a previous weatherproofing project so we saved a few bucks:

And here’s the finished result!

I’m not going to lie, it turned out much better than expected.

If anyone else wants to do this I can upload the bitmap and RDWorks file. Please share a pic if you use them so I can see your cool Easter Egg too.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!

[1] Not the colored bunny kind

[2] Yes I know Mew isn’t a cat. But that tail! And that face!

[3] I actually have no idea if this will work in practice, but my research said it should. Guess we’ll find out the old fashioned way!

On the Shortness of Life

Posted on April 24, 2019 by jared - Practical Philosophy

My browser’s bookmark bar is prime digital real estate. I see that bar no matter what tab I use or page I browse, and often single click to access its prominent collections.[1]

In the middle I’ve placed On the Shortness of Life by Seneca the Younger (and next to that is a link to a comic I’ve titled Man’s Failure by zenpencils.com).[2]

I first saw this essay a few hours into my shift at the front desk of a hotel in college. I had discovered Tim Ferriss and The Four Hour Workweek a few weeks earlier, and during downtime perused Tim’s blog when he published a post on it.

That was April 24th, 2009. Exactly ten years ago.

In that time I’ve repeatedly revisited the essay, and found new parts jump out at me each time. As it’s my 10th anniversary of reading this timeless essay I will attempt[3] to share my thoughts on it:

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it.

I often recommend this essay to friends, family, and online strangers. When I do I suggest they read the first few paragraphs, if anything at all, because from the outset it’s made clear: stop wasting time!

Seneca later shares some ways time is wasted and his suggestions for its worthy use, but we’ll cover those later. For now it’s enough to ask the reader to evaluate their usage of the days and minutes we’re given.

Life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men’s fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn

I tried to cut the above quote down…but there’s too much truth to leave out. About 2,000 years later and all of this applies to us, or at least people we know or hear about.

No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life!

We often hear time = money. Seneca points out that of the two, time is worse to waste, and usually the first thing wasted.

You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.” And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer?

This was a big driver behind my decision to try to retire early.[4] I remember a saying but can’t recall its source:

“When we’re young we have energy and time but no money. When we’re middle-aged we have energy and money but no time. When we’re old we have money and time but no energy.”

What follows in the essay is a description of famous Romans who had everything most people may crave: fame, riches, power. And they despised them in hopes of leisure and time!

He then continues:

It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and—what will perhaps make you wonder more—it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.

It reminds me of Thoreau: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

If each one could have the number of his future years set before him as is possible in the case of the years that have passed, how alarmed those would be who saw only a few remaining, how sparing of them would they be!

I have a Chrome extension called Death Clock. Every time I open a new tab I see an actuarial estimation of how many days I have left complete with hours and seconds counting down in realtime.

A bit morbid, but hey- memento mori.

I hear that one of these pampered people—provided that you can call it pampering to unlearn the habits of human life—when he had been lifted by hands from the bath and placed in his sedan-chair, said questioningly: “Am I now seated?” Do you think that this man, who does not know whether he is sitting, knows whether he is alive, whether he sees, whether he is at leisure?

One of my favorite insights from Seneca: is this wealthy man, attended to hand and foot, bathed and carried, really at leisure? Or does he only boast in the appearance of leisure, and is actually a prisoner to sloth?

Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only. They annex ever age to their own; all the years that have gone ore them are an addition to their store.

I don’t think philosophy is the only way to live a fulfilling life, but having a keen awareness of self and time does help. Many of my coworkers take mindfulness classes, and that word tends to be followed by “meditation.” I am not a regular practitioner of meditation [5], but I am a regular examiner of my life. Be it driving, walking, reading, or looking out the window, I place my life under the magnifying glass and review its parts with high frequency. It’s daunting at times, but also helpful. I recommend it 🙂

Seneca continues extolling the virtues of philosophy, which is fine with me when taken in the definition I just shared. And then he says:

Those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled

This resonates with me because I want to learn from the past (mine and others’) to make a better future, which informs me what I need to do now to make that happen.

Note that I take it with a grain of salt; circumstances are always changing, and we can’t plan for every eventuality. However, I find more success when I have a plan that goes sideways than just having no plan.

Take now some part of your time for yourself as well. And I do not summon you to slothful or idle inaction, or to drown all your native energy in slumbers and the pleasures that are dear to the crowd. That is not to rest.

I love this part. Sleep, relaxation, recreation are good, but to fully rest we must also take time for our minds. I’m reminded of various memes showing people getting chores done (or binge watching Netflix) while a ghostly Anxiety figure looms behind them.

I must end here. Stoicism in the age of now is to think about what you’re doing and to do it with purpose. Work, relax, and live in balance.

[1] Why don’t I hide my bookmark bar to remove distractions/increase focus on what I’m working on/looking at? Because I like the reminders I’ve chosen to be there! I don’t think that all distractions are bad; sometimes we need a wakeup call from the routines/habits we find ourselves in.

[2] Why did I give it this name in my bookmark bar? Because I like it more than the title given by the author. “Man’s Failure” is sufficiently pithy, telling me the story at a glance: “This is man’s failure; do not repeat it!”

[3] I’m concerned about my ability to add more to this topic than what has been said, by Tim and many others. With the #1 goal of this site in mind, I’ll try to make it short and meaningful so your time isn’t wasted. I also expect my perspective to continue to change; it would be fun to write about this every 10 years!

[4] Emphasis on “try.” I’ll post more on this journey in the coming months/years, but it won’t be the focus of this site. Others have done it way better than I ever could have, including rootofgood.com and mrmoneymustache.com

[5] I’ve tried multiple ways and formats. I don’t like guided meditation apps or recordings, and instead prefer to just close my eyes and listen to nature sounds. Still a work in progress!

Why

Posted on April 22, 2019 by jared - Meaning

As this is my first post on my eponymous site I’ll start things off by asking the “Why?” behind a few things:

Why am I making this blog?
- I don’t know. I’m usually a very private person, so I’m still surprised I’m putting my name and thoughts and creations out there.
- My post style and content may change over time as I change with time.
- I’m also listening to what you want me to post, and if it makes sense I’ll try to post it.
Why are you, the reader, here?
- I don’t know, but I’m glad you’re here! Please tell me why in the comments below.
- I hope you find the content worth your time. That’s my promise to you: I will do my best to not waste your time.

Why do you post what you do?
- Not sure; most likely because I got utility from it, and/or that I want you to find some utility from it too!
- Do note that all thoughts are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer.

So, to recap, I’m glad you’re here and I promise to make this site worth your time.