Tuesday, June 17, 2008

I Wood

I know you’ve all been sitting on screws and nails, waiting to hear all about my first attempt at bench construction.

Well, let’s see. I wanted my finished project to look like this picture on the left here, only in wood and not a cartoon.

We carefully measured twice and cut once. Ok, sometimes we had to measure and cut several times because no matter what my tape measure said, the piece didn’t fit. I don’t pretend to understand it. Careful, JW!



Then JW used his new framing nail weapon to shatter some wood....ooops, put some pieces together, sorry. That nail gun scares me. I’m glad I didn’t hear about this poor guy’s nail gun accident until after we were done.



I was seriously beginning to doubt our completion of this project when we experienced severe difficulties in assembling the box portion. My husband and I are both intelligent people. You wouldn’t have known that yesterday afternoon. Finally, we assembled something that appears to be a box. From the outside anyway.



A few more cuts, nails, screws, a trip to the hardware store, a new high powered screwdriver (oh yes, the motor burned out on ours) and a rubber tree plant later, it looked like this!



WOW! We did it! It looks great from across the yard. If you get close, you can see that it was completely crafted by people who had no idea what they were doing. I’m very proud of it as a first try, but don't worry Big BahUna, we're not giving you up anytime soon :)

I did learn quite a few things yesterday.

2x4’s do not measure 2” by 4”. Why? Why would they call them something they are not? Had I known this, I could have saved hours trying to figure out why a 57” board attached to two 2x4’s would only measure 60” across.

No matter what project you do, it will require at least seven trips to the home improvement store of your choice. It is impossible to get everything you will need in one trip.

Something will break during your project requiring you to purchase additional tools in order to finish.

Plans are great, but why don’t they state in what order to assemble these pieces of wood or is this something that I’m supposed to just know or have learned in school? I must have been absent that day.

Before you leave the home improvement store, check the little tags on the end of the wood that state the size they are pretending to be, like 1x6x8. Don’t trust the sign above the wood in the store.

Those are just a few things I’m pondering today, along with some of the questions on my buddy Malcolm’s weekly trivia game.

All in all, JW and I had a lot of fun building this and laughing at ourselves.

Would I do another project like this? You bet I wood! :)

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

wala pulos imo blog.

Anonymous said...

Considering the fact that it could be more accurate in giving informations.

Anonymous said...

It could give you more facts.

Anonymous said...

Ive read this topic for some blogs. But I think this is more informative.

Anonymous said...

Concentrate to the things that could give information to the people.

Anonymous said...

Its ok if the appearance of your blog is not good. The important thing is the topic or the content of your blog.

Anonymous said...

Well done for this wonderful blog.

Anonymous said...

All I can say is nothing because your blog is not interesting to read.

The Rock Chick said...

Lotto and Frineds: please don't make me have to activate the word verification thing. I really hate that! :)

Jessica Morris said...

Ohhh - I agree. I hate word activators too! :-p So be gone Lotto person!

The bench rocks!! I love it! Super cool and cute and the plant coming out of it is so cool!! Are you leaving it like that or staining or painting? Curious minds want to know!!

Unknown said...

You no the screws and nails were actually starting to be comfortable but for you I will give them up ;)
Looks awesome, in fact may have to have Alen build something like that for our back porch area, would look nice.
We will making lots of wood projects this summer, will show pictures. Right now I am recovering from my surgery which went well, and the rest of the family are cleaning the basement from last week's flooding.

Anonymous said...

You had me laughing - it's sort of like Tim Allen on Home Unimprovement, lol!

I use a nail gun to construct the superstructures of my art - but man, the first time I had that thing in my hand I was sure I was gonna nail my toe to the floor or my fingers to my toes or something equally horrific, lol. Now I swing it around like a hair dryer.

Dustin said...

Ugh - annoying blog comment spammers! BE GONE!

Well done Rock Chick and Hubby! Well Done!

The Rock Chick said...

Jessica: I'm going to stain it. I already bought this cedar colored stain so we'll see what happens :) Oh by the way, I got my CVS card yesterday!!! Time to give that a try!

sassy: well, thank you! If you find screws and nails comfortable, you would love sitting on my bench because I have one stripped screw sticking up that I can't get out yet LOL. Glad to hear your surgery went well! Surgery's no fun (believe me, I know)! What kinds of things are you making? The hubby's all fired up about making something else now! LOL

PopArt: It's exactly like Home Unimprovement!!!! We are getting a little better and the plant in the box covers up a lot of the difficulties :) I hope that one day I can get comfortable enough with the power tools to actually use them, much less swing them around!

Dustin: well, thank you!!! By the way, Crystal liked the box so I sent her the plans :) If you guys make it, I'd be curious to see how yours turns out!