Category Archives: Shop

The woodworking shop, and keeping the workspace organized and productive

Saying goodbye to the old kitchen faucet.

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It was an emotional weekend.  The lovely kitchen faucet, the one that came free with the house, finally decided it was time to go.  Yes, the poor thing just refused to turn off, letting water leak out and drip unless you wiggled the tired handle just right.  You could hear the flakes of oxidized metal scraping off every time you went to pull on that lever.  I tried to save it, but in the end, there was no hope for it.

It was a fighter, too.  Every nut and bolt was sealed in place by years of corroded metal, calcite deposits and the petrified remains of plumber’s putty.  But in the end, hammers and saws and some brute force were able to gently pull this old fossil out of the sink.

My choices for new faucets were limited to exactly two.  There was the $179 model and the $219 model.  They were otherwise identical.  I went for the one that didn’t look like the box had been opened and scavenged for parts.  It won’t be the same as the old one.  Nothing will ever drop flakes of calcite onto our dishes like that old faucet.  I just keep telling myself that it was meant to be.

Also this weekend I got the garage wired for surround sound.  I don’t care about the sound so much as I just like having the speakers set up in the wall, which means they don’t take up shelf space. Plus, surround sound kinda rocks.

Got rid of the front light fixture (I may smash its top off with an axe and stick it in the ground and plant crap inside it, kinda like that cute little chair we saw in town) (lookit the pics – you’ll see what I mean).  When I went to install the new light fixture I opened the box and realized we were delivered the wrong one.  So now there’s just a couple live wires sticking out of a pole next to the front door.  Home, crap home.

It’s a war zone

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It starts.  We broke ground on the garage.  They dug a nice trench and set up an area for drainage.  Found some big landscaping boulders down there too (not like we don’t have about 4,216 boulders already, but I’ll take a few more).

It’s going to be a while before we even think about landscaping.  But when we do, I like to have a bunch of rocks to work with.  I remember in Denver we paid like $900 for a landscaping boulder.  Out here, I got more than I know what to do with.

The excavation went really well, and quick.  Didn’t encounter anything they couldn’t dig up with the backhoe.  Next comes the forms for the concrete.  Once the forms are constructed, the concrete is poured.  Once that’s dry, the framing is put up.  And the roof.  And the sheathing.  Electrical.  Roof.  Before you know it we’ll have a garage.

With a garage comes my tools, and a shop.  And inside the house we’ll have the floors installed and we’ll get some furniture here.  We’ll have furniture, shop, real floors, a garage.  It’ll start to feel a little less like camping.